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Social Solutions in the Light of Christian Ethics 

Crown 8vo. Gold top. Net, $1.50 



HISTORICAL SETTING 

OF THE 

EARLY GOSPEL 



BY 

THOMAS CUMING HALL 

Professor of Christian Ethics in Union Theological Seminary, New York 







NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 
CINCINNATI; JENNINGS & GRAHAM 






Copyright. 1912, by 
THOMAS CUMING HALL 



€CI,A319674 



4 



4 

■■1 



CONTENTS 
CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

The World Then and Now ^ 

The Importance of the Study— Paul's Appeal to the 
World— The Historical Analogies between the Age of 
Tiberius and Our Own— The Age and Its Social 
Reconstruction— The Ethical Interest of the Age— 
An Age of Romance— An Age of Sea Power— Jesus 
and the Political Power— Paul and the Church. 

CHAPTER II 

The Political World of Jesus's Day 28 

Roine— The Synagogue— Greece— The Orient— Egypt 
—Africa (apart from Egypt)— Asia Minor— Palestine. 



59 



78 



CHAPTER III 

The Economic World of Jesus's Day 

' Commerce— Agriculture— Economic Meaning of War— 
Slavery in Its Two Aspects— Manufactures— The East 
and Its "Wealth"— Egypt and Its Corn— Africa, Syria. 
and the Roman Markets— Population. 

CHAPTER IV 

The Religious World of Jesus's Day 

The Primitive Polytheism— Causes of Its Decline- 
Oriental Mysteriolatry— Gnosticism— Cynic Stoicism- 
Philosophy's Weakness — Judaism. 

CHAPTER V 

Christianity and Economics • ^^^ 

The Gospel of Industry— The Economic Brotherhood 

—The Organization of the Freedman Class— The 

5 



6 CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Transportation of Slavery — The Democratization of a 
Caste System — The Ideals of the Freedman Class 
Reorganized. 

CHAPTER VI 

Christianity and Politics 119 

The Political Hope of the Synagogue — The Political 
Hope of the Sacramental Church — The Means to this 
End — The Hierarchical Form of the Church — ^The 
Significance of Persecution — East and West. 

CHAPTER VII 

The Church in the House 133 

The Oriental City of Paul's Day — Influence of Other 
Organizations upon the Young Church — Hours of 
Meetings — Philip's Visit — The Ordinary Order of 
Worship — ^The Preaching of a Coming Messias — Tra- 
jan's Rescript — Type of Preaching — Demonology — 
The Moral Healing of the World — Hospitality — 
Church Buildings — The Secret Service — ^The Various 
LfCvels of Life and Teaching — The Educational Work 
of the Early Church — The Church and Its Literature 
— ^The Successor of the Synagogue. 

CHAPTER VIII 

The Changing Gospel Hope 148 

CHAPTER IX 
Summary 166 



PREFACE 

In these pages the attempt is made to 
make once more the historical setting of the 
gospel vivid to our minds. It is exceedingly 
dijQBcult for us to recover a world in many 
ways so different from our own, and yet 
recent historical study has done so much to 
aid us that the author has tried to sum up 
the results of the most recent investigations. 
Before each chapter will be found an indi- 
cation of the contents, and a few of the 
books the author has found most useful in 
opening up the subject farther to any 
student wanting to more fully examine any 
topic. The fact that the sources are not 
given is due to the character of the volume 
and the desire not to burden the pages with 
footnotes, but the presentation rests upon 
first-hand investigation of what literary 
material exists for forming a picture of the 
critical times in which the Christian faith 
took form. 

Thomas C. Hall. 

New York, July, 1912. 



CHAPTER I 

The World Then and Now 

CONTENTS 

The undisputed place of Christianity — The need of un- 
derstanding the inner meaning of the movement — 
The appeal Paul made to the world — The differences 
and analogies between the ancient and the modern 
worlds — The social reconstruction in Jesus's time — 
The ethical interest of Jesus's time — The political 
reconstruction going on — The central interest of the 
early Gospel — Paul and the Roman world. 

LITERATURE 

The sources are the books of the New Testament and 
the literature of the first three centuries, together with 
the inscriptions recovered from the sands of Egypt. Be- 
sides the great classic histories of Rome by Merivale, 
Mom m sen (German and English translation) , and G. 
Ferrero (Italian and English translation) , consult S. Dill, 
"Roman Society from the Time of Nero to Marcus 
Aurelius," 1905. Ernest Renan, "Marc-Aurele et la fin 
du Monde Antique," 3d edition, 1882. G. A. Deissmann, 
**Licht vom Osten," 2d edition, 1909 (German and En- 
glish translation). A. Harnack, "Die Mission und Aus- 
breitung des Christentums," 2d edition, 1906 (German 
and English translation of first edition). A. Ritschl, 
"Die Entstehung der altkathoUschen Kirche," 2d edi- 

9 



10 HISTORICAL SETTING 

tion, 1857. E. Troltsch, "Die Soziallehren der christ- 
lichen Kirche," 1912. Vol. I. Eusebius, "Church His- 
tory" (best translation by A. C. McGiffert with notes). 
A. C. McGiffert, "A History of Christianity in the 
Apostolic Age," 1897. P. Wernle, "Die Anfange 
unserer Religion," 2d edition, 1904 (German and English 
translation). Moffatt, "Introduction to the New Tes- 
tament," 1910, or one of the "introductions" of Zahn or 
Holtzmann. Edwin Hatch, "The Organization of the 
Early Christian Churches," 1881, and "The Influence of 
Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church," 
2d edition, 1891. L. Friedlander, "Darstellungen aus 
der Sitten-Geschichte Roms von August bis Antonine," 
7th edition, 1901. A. Harnack, "Das Wesen des Chris- 
tentums" (German and English translation). W. M. 
Ramsay, "Paul the Traveler and Roman Citizen." G. 
A. Deissmann, "Paulus," 1911. For the ethics of the 
period, consult the author's "History of Ethics within 
Organized Christianity," 1910, Chapters I to IV. 

It is now unthinkable that any of the 
existing religions should again seriously 
challenge Christianity. No culture is likely 
now to struggle successfully with the aggres- 
sive modern Protestantism of the New 
World. If any serious mind rejects organ- 
ized Christianity, it will not, in general, 
turn to Confucianism or to Buddhism with 
any genuine hope, and still less to Mo- 
hammedanism. The unreality of such 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 11 

modem versions of Buddhism as that of 
Schopenhauer is too apparent; the fan- 
tastic character of any Oriental claimants 
is too patent. For the men of to-day, who 
are trained in the historical method and 
the experimental laboratory, the question 
of religion presents itself still as acceptance 
or rejection of some form of Christianity. 
And even proposed modern forms of re- 
ligious organization, like the Monistic Fed- 
eration of Germany or Christian Science, 
must take over into their teaching some of 
the most assured religious and ethical results 
of Christian history. 

Even great social movements, like political 
socialism or the various forms of organized 
democratic advance, find they must relate 
themselves in one manner or another to a 
great body of doctrine and Christian re- 
flection. It is therefore of deepest interest 
to try and understand as fully as possible 
the inner meaning of the Christian faith. 
That it has not been always understood is 
not alone the fault of its critics, but also 
of its defenders. We have altogether too 
easily accepted the particular forms we 
hold without asking whence they came, 



12 HISTORICAL SETTING 

or what were the special needs that 
Christianity met in the early days of its 
struggle. For one of the remarkable things 
about Christianity was its power of adapta- 
tion to these various needs. And although 
Protestants recognize how quickly and fa- 
tally primitive Christianity became merged 
in the Imperialist movement, and under 
the papacy mastered the world by a man- 
ifold compromise, yet in the midst of all 
declension and distortion it never wholly 
lost its great redeeming character nor 
completely surrendered to the glamour of 
an enticing tempter. 

It is therefore of great importance to 
get back to the original character of the 
early Christian Church and to feel again, 
if possible, the first thrill of its earliest 
enthusiasm. For to-day we are bringing 
back the Christian message to that Eastern 
world from whence it came, and the better 
we understand its origin and original spirit 
the less likely are we to make the grave 
mistake of confusing the essential import 
of its teachings in their eternal significance 
with the local and temporary expressions 
borrowed from its Occidental adaptation. 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 13 

The teachings of Jesus have proved 
themselves redemptive in individual lives 
of all times and all places. Whether in 
India or China, in the somber glooms of 
African forests or amid the cold whiteness 
of the far North, God has appeared to 
chosen souls in the face of Christ Jesus, 
and in his life they have beheld God's 
most splendid glory and known themselves 
accepted and forgiven. 

It now only remains to show that the 
great national and associated life of men, 
at present still so far removed from the 
Christian ideal, can be brought into sub- 
jection to the King of kings, and made to 
reflect the love and tenderness of the 
Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ. 

One of the mastering notes of the early 
proclamation was the appeal Paul made 
to the whole world of his day. The vision 
of the primitive Christian prophet was not 
that of a few elect souls safe in heaven, 
but of a fiery judgment and a splendid 
vindication upon earth of the righteousness 
revealed in Jesus Christ, and of a world 
that had once indeed rejected him, but 



14 HISTORICAL SETTING 

was now redeemed and purified and sitting 
at his feet. And again to-day we are 
thrilled by the vision of a world-wide 
missionary conquest of all lands and people; 
of a peace established among nations know- 
ing war no more. He is not worthy of 
the name of Christian who does not live 
from time to time in the vision of a new 
age which faith conjures before our longing 
eyes; the vision of a world swallowed up 
in that loving righteousness made so mani- 
fest in the life, the sufferings, and the 
resurrection of Jesus Christ. To-day the 
scientific curiosity of men has made it 
possible as never before for even the un- 
learned to enter into something of the 
heats and struggles out of which emerged 
Christianity, and to contrast them with our 
own present position, and to learn of them 
lessons of transcendent importance. For 
in spite of all the great differences between 
our age and that of the young Roman 
imperialism, there are many profound anal- 
ogies. We can hardly vividly realize a 
world without the modern machinery upon 
which we are so dependent; a world with- 
out gas or electricity, without railways or 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 15 

steamboats; without sugar or coffee; poor 
even in its wealth, and sunk even in its 
wisdom in miserable superstitions, and 
menaced by war and disease in a way 
now made unthinkable. And yet it was 
the beginning of our modern world. Greece 
was giving the intellectual forms in which 
we still do our thinking. Roman law was 
laying the foundation upon which all our 
legal structures are based. The Orient was 
whispering into the world's ears the stories 
of mysteries and adventures with which 
childhood's imagination still is awakened, 
and Judaism was preparing the way for 
the cosmopolitan religious movement which 
was to sweep men of all races into a com- 
mon and world-wide confederation. 

Then, as now, three languages opened 
practically the whole world to men of 
education. The Koine, or Hellenistic 
Greek, Latin, and Hebrew did for any 
man of cultivation what English, German, 
and French do for us to-day. Then, as 
now, a system of roads linked the world 
together in close relationship. The tomb- 
stone of a Phrygian merchant mentions 
seventy-two trips to Rome. The passing 



16 HISTORICAL SETTING 

of the Roman imperialism in the fifth 
century seemed for a time to close those 
highways, but now again the life-throbs of 
the farthest East are felt in the extreme 
West. Then, as now, local and narrow 
religions were being broken down by the 
mere force of foreign contacts. Men were 
then, as now, studying the religions about 
them and the religious passions of the past 
in the eager hope for light and consolation. 
Then, as now, men's minds were looking 
forward, sometimes with fearsomeness, 
sometimes with brave buoyant courage, 
facing with gladness an unknown but wel- 
comed future. Orient and Occident faced 
each other then and very much as they 
face each other to-day. Then, as now, the 
Occident felt itself physically superior, but 
paused in wonder before the teeming popula- 
tions and the hoary antiquity of the mys- 
terious Orient. Then, as now, new forces 
— social, political, and economic — filled the 
authoritative classes with terror and fore- 
boding and the less fortunate classes with 
sometimes fierce anticipations of the posses- 
sion of power. Then, as now, and only 
then as only now, the whole world felt the 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 17 

pressure of an unformulated code that 
extended its protection to the stranger, and 
made even remote and difficult regions 
places for exploration. As now so then 
the world had become suddenly mobile. 
Soldiers of fortune, merchants, craftsmen, 
missionaries penetrated remotest regions 
and brought back the knowledge of human 
ways and customs from afar. And in one 
further circumstance the age was like our 
own: it was an age of restless propaganda 
in both philosophy and religion, because of 
the breaking down of the national lines 
that had hitherto defined and decided for 
him each man's religion. It was a widely 
cosmopolitan world, filled with denation- 
alized men, and even nations. Economic 
causes had made the contrasts between pov- 
erty and wealth as oppressive as in our own 
day, and visions of a new era were essential 
factors in the thinking of at least many 
prophetic leaders. Hence the study of the 
setting of the gospel story has especial 
importance for the interpreter of it to our 
generation. The New Testament is an 
intensely modern book. 

There are still many unsettled literary 



18 HISTORICAL SETTING 

and critical questions, but the moral and 
religious value of the book is not dependent 
upon any possible answer to these. The 
historical gains of the last decade have 
given vividness and reality to the story 
contained in these pages. We need indeed 
to have our historical imaginations quick- 
ened, that this wonderful literature may 
stand out again not only as a voice speak- 
ing with authority to the deeps of our own 
souls, but as the record of a divine response 
to the urgent needs of a great, restless, 
weary world in those old days agone. 

That world was passing through an age 
of great social reconstruction. Some who 
tremble to-day in the face of possible im- 
portant social change would do well to 
remember that even the setting up of a 
new socialistic state might conceivably be 
carried through with less economic change 
than was involved in the radical transforma- 
tion of society from a slave-worked state 
to a feudal system, or the political changes 
involved in passing from a military and 
highly centralized imperialism to the bal- 
ance of nationalities independently sovereign 
which constitutes the Europe of to-day. 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 19 

Tremendous are the changes foreshadowed 
in the pages of the New Testament. Over 
its story brood the spirits of unrest and 
social idealism that had spoken so effectively 
in the lives of the Old Testament prophets. 
And these same spirits hover to-day over 
the best of our literature and are inspiring 
some of the noblest of our preachers. Im- 
pending changes all thoughtful men are 
trying to understand, and although there is 
no agreement even along what main lines 
those changes will take place, the air is 
vibrant with expectation just as in the 
days when Jesus spoke, and from the 
seclusion of Galilee made a whole world 
hear. 

Another marked feature of the age of 
Jesus was its absorbing ethical interest. 
As to-day so then there was a most far- 
reaching demand for moral guidance. The 
old moralities, based upon the authority of 
outworn creeds and cults, no longer held 
the thoughtful, and men in all classes were 
asking, "What is right.?'' and "Why are 
these wrongs about us.?'' As the luxury 
and frivolity of Julia Caesar's daughter 
in Rome set thoughtful, earnest men ask- 



20 HISTORICAL SETTING 

ing after some standard for the home, so 
Herod and his court awoke loud protests 
not only from John the Baptist, but in the 
hearts of many classes. The rising sense 
of revolt against injustice does not always 
indicate that the injustice has become more 
pronounced. The patient that is getting 
well often feels the smart of his wound 
more than it would be felt in the fever that 
was killing him. Our investigation may 
not convince us that the world of Jesus's 
day was worse than it had oftfen been 
before, or that it was especially corrupt 
as compared even with days since; but 
the world was acutely and vividly aware of 
its moral state. We find evidences that in 
Rome as well as in Asia Minor, in Egypt 
as well as in Palestine, men were awak- 
ened to the moral needs of humanity, and 
were turning to teachers with an almost 
pathetic eagerness to find the way of life 
and safety. 

Nor are we to get an exaggerated idea 
of the expectancy of that age. Just as 
to-day the vast mass of us spend our time 
in doing the thing that has to be done at 
the moment; just as money must be earned 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 21 

and spent; just as the routine of life — eating, 
sleeping, visiting, with hours of relaxation 
— swallows up for most of us nearly all 
the energy at our disposal, so then the 
village workman did his daily task, the 
seller sat before his little booth and partly 
made and partly sold his product. The 
great average life was not so very different 
in its gossip and excitement, its interests 
and its fears, its passing wants and its future 
hopes from similar life to-day. 

Nevertheless, then, as now, the world 
was bound together in some larger interests 
common to all. The great Roman state, 
once a vaguely understood republic, had 
now launched upon that fateful competition 
with Oriental monarchy which shook the 
whole balance of power, and gave rise 
in the humblest of Eastern bazaars to 
political speculation as keen as the rise 
of Japan and the awakening of China 
excites among us to-day. Moreover, exist- 
ing class status had been broken down. 
The "'new man'' in Roman history had 
begun to play a part similar to that of the 
self-made man of our generation. The 
old sharp class lines no longer kept out 



22 HISTORICAL SETTING 

ambitious men from trying to gain the 
highest kind of power, and the imagina- 
tions of the energetic were fired by the 
accounts of successes on the part of those 
most disadvantageously placed at birth. 

In another respect the German scholar 
Rhode has shown a curious analogy be- 
tween the age of the Gospels and our own. 
It was a novel-reading age. The whole 
Hellenistic world was fed with romance 
literature, in which love strove with mis- 
fortune and triumphed in spite of perils 
by land and sea. In these romances all 
the strange wonders from Babylon and 
tales from India mingled with the legends 
of Greece and Asia Minor. We have as 
one of the latest products the collection 
of old tales made, indeed, in Cairo, and 
quite late in its composition, but early in 
its material — The Arabian Nights Enter- 
tainment. These romances appealed to 
the awakened curiosity of the world of 
that day, and furnished also a rude ethics, 
and a constant vision of virtue at last 
triumphant and the wicked powers crushed 
and vanquished. Thus were enforced les- 
sons of sentimental ethics, in which the 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 23 

great primitive virtues of courage, fidelity, 
shrewdness, patience, humility, faith, and 
loyal constancy are dwelt upon. These 
stories appealed both to the imagination 
and to the youthful ambition. They seem 
to have created a sort of chivalry, and to 
have been often a fruitful and effective 
appeal. 

The clash of East and West under 
Alexander the Great, and then the struggle 
of Pompey with Caesar Augustus, flung, as 
it were, the world into the melting-pot. 
The struggle threatened the whole balance 
of power; and not only so, but it began 
the fierce fight for a new and fundamental 
adjustment of forces to be carried on 
under quite new and strange conditions. 
Like our own age, it was an age of sea 
power. Not only was Rome compelled to 
build a fleet for purposes of conquest, but, 
like England to-day, she felt that unless 
she held the paths open by which food 
would reach her she might be starved out 
in a season. Never again until our own 
day was command of the sea to play quite 
the part it played from the destruction of 
Carthage to the firm establishment of 



24 HISTORICAL SETTING 

Roman imperialism. It is most interesting 
to see that the same economic and poHtical 
conditions that mark the wars of England 
with Holland and France for hegemony of 
the sea, marked also the attitude of Rome 
to Carthage, Egypt, and all the fleets of 
the Mediterranean basin. Anyone rising 
from the reading of Captain Mahan's 
history of sea power must be struck with 
the remarkable way in which the Roman 
struggle has been reduplicated in a larger 
way upon the Atlantic Coast. Naturally, 
there are profound differences in method 
and outcome, but the analogy is at once 
striking and instructive. 

When we read the Gospels the question 
naturally arises, How far did the man 
Jesus apprehend the political conditions 
of the world beyond Galilee.^ He does 
not give evidence in the accounts that 
have come down to us of any special 
political interest, and yet it would be un- 
safe to judge too narrowly from the Gospels. 
His following seems to have come in large 
part from Galilee, and Simon, at least, was a 
Canaansean, or Zealot (Matt. 10: 4; Luke. 6. 
15), and with the resistance of the Zealots to 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 25 

Roman overlordship political leaders had 
constantly to reckon. So that all the political 
questions connected with the Roman and 
Herodian plans must have been the subject 
of constant conversation and thought among 
his following. Moreover, John the Baptist 
had been a dreaded political leader, and 
the disciples of John and of Jesus had 
much in common. Then, again, all who 
know the Orient tell us of the extraordinary 
way in which news, and particularly politi- 
cal news, circulates in the markets and 
bazaars which there take the place of the 
newspaper with us. And many in India, 
for instance, are astonished at the rapid 
circulation of any special news and the 
way in which all seem thoroughly in- 
formed. It was natural that the gospel 
story should dwell less on this side of the 
early teachings of Jesus, for, in the first 
place, the political outlook was overshad- 
owed by the expected speedy return of 
the Messias; and, secondly, the narrower 
and more local Jewish hope had been 
swallowed up in the larger world-wide am- 
bition of the Christian movement. The 
Gospels, therefore, were written for this 



26 HISTORICAL SETTING 

larger world, and concerned themselves 
most immediately not with the social and 
political conditions but with the immediate 
ethical and spiritual life. 

He, however, who wishes to understand 
Paul must understand the Roman world 
to which Paul preached. The letters enable 
us to understand something of the struggle 
that was involved in getting access for the 
gospel of Jesus to this great and cosmo- 
politan life; and in them we see the 
infant Church already struggling with all 
kinds of compromise and beset by the 
temptations to which so often organized 
Christianity yielded. The very fact that 
Paul's letters are not systematic treatments 
of any abstract questions, but are addressed 
to exceedingly pressing concrete situations, 
compels us to try and understand those 
situations, and all the light we can gain 
on them helps us to understand the letters. 
For instance, it is often hard to say how 
far Paul remained thoroughly Jewish in his 
modes of thought, or how far Hellenic 
culture had influenced him, and yet the 
interpretation of some of his most impor- 
tant phrases depends upon our answer to 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 27 

that question. The study of the back- 
ground of the gospel story may enable us 
to come to some conclusions that will 
most usefully influence our understanding 
of many particular passages of the New 
Testament. 



28 HISTORICAL SETTING 



CHAPTER II 

The Political World of Jesus's Day 

CONTENTS 

The place of Judaism in the Roman world — The weak- 
ness of Rome — The character of Caesar Augustus — 
His part in a religious revival — The part played by 
Tiberius Csesar — ^The military and commercial im- 
portance of Palestine — Rome as a national liberator — 
Her idealism — Her policy — ^Her services — The num- 
bers of the Roman world— The separation of classes — 
The Synagogue — Judaism in city life — The divisive 
character of Christianity — The associated life of the 
day — The losses of Judaism — ^The political place of 
Hellenism — The political influence of the Orient — 
Egypt and its influence — Christianity and Asia Minor 
— The town and the early Church — The obscurity of 
the movement. 

LITERATURE 

E. Sch'iirer, "Geschichte des Jiidischen Volkes" (Ger- 
man and English translation), 3d edition, 1906. For 
the synagogue, see the articles in the Jewish Encyclo- 
pedia. W. Bousset, "Jesu Predigt in ihrem Gegensatz 
zum Judentum," 1892. J. G. Droysen, "Geschichte des 
Hellenismus," 2d edition, 1878. For Egypt, see the 
closing chapters of J. H. Breasted 's "History of Egypt.'* 
P. Wendland, "Christentum und Hellenismus in ihren 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 29 

litterarischen Beziehungen," 1902, and "Die hellenlstisch- 
romische Kultur in ihren Beziehungen zu Judentum 
und Christentum," 1907. 

Rome ruled the world, but not without 
dispute. What we know as Germany re- 
mained a turbulent and unconquered men- 
ace to Rome's Gallic provinces. Across 
the mountains of Asia Minor remained a 
shadow land full of restless dreamers. The 
internal affairs of Rome were a cause of 
grave anxiety to thoughtful men. An 
Oriental imperialism had been forced upon 
proud, unyielding shoulders, and the auto- 
cratic oligarchy had been submerged in its 
own military successes. The Orient was 
still restless and only half subdued, and at 
any moment a strong Oriental leader might 
rise to undo the labor of years. It was 
no vain nor impossible vision that floated 
before the mind of Jesus on the mount of 
temptation when he saw the world at the 
feet of an energetic Messias uniting the East 
under Jewish leadership, and so dominating 
the kingdoms of the world. For Jews 
were everywhere, and formed probably the 
largest homogeneous population in that 
complex world. What Mohammed did six 



30 HISTORICAL SETTING 

hundred years later would have seemingly 
been even more easy in Jesus's day, and 
with genius in command such fanatically 
religious forces as Mohammed led would 
have swept the Roman imperialism almost 
unresistingly away, for that imperialism 
was as yet but badly knit together. In 
spite of Augustus and Tiberius, the struc- 
ture was raw and crude. The plundering of 
the provinces was not the main weakness. 
The poor and the weak were used to being 
plundered, and the possessing classes of the 
conquered countries were often Rome's ig- 
noble allies in the process. The prmcipal 
difficulty was that the administration had 
grown up so loosely that no one knew where 
responsibility really lay. The appeal to 
Caesar really meant an appeal to all sorts 
of senatorial influences and backstair in- 
trigues. The old agrarian oligarchy had 
given way to a plutocracy, partly military 
and partly based upon commercial ex- 
ploitation. It is absurd to ever speak of 
Rome as a "democracy," or even a *'re- 
public/' in our sense of representative 
government. An oligarchy whose power 
rested upon inherited political privileges. 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 31 

and to some extent upon the possession of 
land, was rapidly being replaced by an 
oligarchy whose power rested almost wholly 
upon possession of capital and ability. 
Rome had not conquered the East without 
being herself overwhelmingly influenced by 
the older culture and civilization. Julius 
Csesar was accused, Mommsen thinks un- 
justly, of wishing to use the title Rex, or 
"King,'' in connection with Rome's foreign 
provinces, while retaining only the title 
"'Imperator" for his relations to Roman 
citizens. Certainly Antony had this in 
mind during his Egyptian adventure, and 
it was the almost inevitable outcome of 
ruling Eastern races who knew only kings 
and had no knowledge of Roman so- 
called republicanism. In point of fact, the 
little Jewish community was more nearly 
a democracy than Rome herself had ever 
been, and perhaps the almost extraordinary 
respect Rome had for Jewish feeling was 
in part due to the resolute democracy she 
had to face in Palestine. The Herods 
catered to this Jewish feeling, and bribed 
and cajoled at Rome to secure permanence 
for the Idumean throne, and the passage in 



32 HISTORICAL SETTING 

Luke (Luke 1. 5), where Herod Antipas is 
called "'king/' although he was only te- 
trarch, shows how readily the Oriental feel- 
ing that only a king could rule made its 
way. Nor was Rome at this time suflficiently 
homogeneous to resist the new and tyran- 
nical impulses streaming in upon her. 

Octavianus, Caesar Augustus (B. C. 30 
to A. D. 14), has been very differently 
estimated in history. He was not a great 
soldier, and not possessed of great per- 
sonal courage at particular military crises, 
but he was wise, exceedingly insistent upon 
his ends, and he shared the opinion of 
many that what Rome needed was a re- 
turn to the old religion. At Ancyra is 
preserved to us a list of the temples he 
built in honor of Jupiter Feretrius, Jupiter 
Liberatis, Apollo, Julius, Quirinus, Minerva, 
Jove, Juno, the Lares of the Penates, the 
Great Mother, and others. He had great 
regard for temples everywhere, and guarded 
with special care such memories of the 
older life as the Sibylline Books. He took 
quite seriously his office as Pontifex Max- 
imus, and did his best to restore ancient 
ceremonies and festival days. Moreover, 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 33 

he understood Rome and the Italian people, 
and after he had once gained power used 
it with great discretion, forbearance, and 
wisdom. He catered to the revived sense 
of ethical responsibility, and banished even 
Julia and her court in response to the 
demands for a purer social atmosphere. 
His reign was marked by strong ethical 
and religious longings. The great poem of 
Vergil is as much a religious poem as 
Milton's "Paradise Lost,'' and is to some 
degree an appeal for a revival of the old 
Roman religiosity. The art revival of 
Augustus's age was distinctly a religious 
awakening. The attempt was to reestab- 
lish under fairer forms and in more phil- 
osophical and ethical dress the old religious 
ideals. Men pondered the past and ideal- 
ized the ancient agrarian oligarchy, whose 
faith in the gods and goddesses had been 
so unshaken. That sturdy faith had much 
resembled the harsh and narrow religious 
life of the Boers in South Africa. It had, 
indeed, conserved some great religious 
values, such as the purity of the home, 
the independence of the individual, the 
resolute courage in defense of the com- 



34 HISTORICAL SETTING 

munity; but, on the other hand, it was 
unexpansive, and substantially lacking in 
all ethical vitality. The expansion of the 
Roman agrarian community was accom- 
plished largely by force, but a shrewd 
diplomacy enabled Rome to really graft 
upon her life the subjugated populations 
while constantly guarding the supremacy 
of the oligarchy. But her religious forms 
were not capable of maintaining the same 
unique leadership. The curiously uncreative 
capacity of this Roman oligarchy was no- 
where more remarkable than on this field. 
Hence Octavius sought only to go back 
and revive old forms, and his instinct led 
him always to govern along the traditional 
lines, as far as it was possible to pour 
the new wine of an ever-expanding military 
imperialism into the old wine skins of an 
agrarian aristocracy. 

When the stepson of Octavius came to 
power he followed fairly closely in the 
footsteps of Julius and Octavius Caesar. 
He, however, was bound to go farther in 
the imperial path, and the world of Roman 
power in the time of Jesus was still 
very incompletely coordinated. Of Tiberius 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 35 

Caesar (A. D. 14 to A. D. 37) we see no 
definite traces in the New Testament, save 
only the general references to Caesar, yet, 
without question, Galilee, at least, was 
seething with discontent, and Rome was 
far from anxious to awaken the fanatical 
forces she dreaded so much. Hence Pilate's 
conduct as described in the Gospel of John 
may well be an accurate picture of the 
anxious care a Roman governor had to 
exercise, lest he be thought ready to sacri- 
fice the interests of the emperor. 

Palestine was the shortest land route to 
so many places that it was important that 
Rome's authority should be unquestioned. 
Indeed, the tragic reduction of Jerusalem 
by Titus was the inevitable outcome of 
Rome's demand for a complete control of 
the life along this important highway, bind- 
ing together East and West, as well as 
North and South. It had been the policy 
of Csesar Augustus to carry on his wars, 
not by the series of brilliant and unex- 
pected rushes of Julius Caesar, but by 
painstaking road-making, and rather slow 
and tedious fortification of the territory 
that secured both the food supply and 



36 HISTORICAL SETTING 

the possible retreat. In this way Rome 
poHtically entrenched herself before making 
a forward step. 

In the time of Jesus Rome was still 
often hailed as the liberator from local 
tyranny. The political overthrow of the 
world would have been impossible if Rome 
had not everywhere found classes and 
parties and trading interests ready to co- 
operate with her in the overthrow of the 
local ruler or ruling class. Just as Na- 
poleon's military career would have been 
impossible had he not been hailed by the 
poorer populations of the countries he 
attacked as a friend of the new liberty, 
and greeted by a rising democratic hope, so 
Rome was still, even under the Caesars, 
thought of as friendly to popular am- 
bitions, and an ally against local tyranny 
and oppression. Of course Rome, like 
Napoleon, ruthlessly betrayed these trust- 
ing anticipations, but again, as by Napoleon 
so by Rome, the cause of popular liberty 
was indirectly advanced. Rome's political 
power was founded upon the suspicions and 
wealoiesses that despotism always pro- 
duces, and amid these suspicions the weaker 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 37 

classes found often protectors and advo- 
cates, who for their own selfish purpose 
advanced popular liberty. 

It would not do, however, to under- 
estimate the idealistic elements also in- 
volved. The poems of Vergil still echo the 
older idealism, and Cicero as ruler of a 
province was as unselfish and as just as 
some of the best English governors have 
ever been. We recognize the injustice of 
those who to-day trace Anglo-Saxon mis- 
sionary enterprise to selfish commercial or 
political ambition. We feel in our hearts 
that he who says that slaves were set free 
by war because New England wanted to 
get rid of slave competition with the wages 
system sees only half a truth. And so also 
we must admit that Rome's political activity 
was not wholly sordid and selfish. Many 
of her best minds felt she was called upon 
to govern as surely and as definitely as 
many Americans think they are called to 
rule in the Philippines. True it is that 
exploitation was almost as sure to follow 
Rome's annexation of a province as night 
follows the day, but at the same time it 
was not by any means always the end 



38 HISTORICAL SETTING 

aimed at. Nor would it have been possi- 
ble to hold the empire together had there 
not been a constant mingling of altruistic 
enthusiasm with the baser and more sordid 
motives. So much was this the case that 
the literature of the period abounds in 
rather highflown professions of unselfish 
motives, much as to-day jingoism dresses 
itself in the garments of idealistic devotion 
to great ends. 

The policy of Rome was not to destroy 
the local forms of government, and her 
law was only so far imposed upon the sub- 
dued world as it was needful from her 
point of view, which was, of course, the 
necessity of conserving her imperial pur- 
pose. However wise this seems on the 
face of it, it wrought havoc with justice 
as understood by the proletariat. No 
matter how weak an under class may be, 
it establishes certain usages which it is 
dangerous for the upper class to ignore. 
These local customs have the force of law. 
When, however, there are two sets of 
law, the strong can always choose the law 
most favorable to their case; and when 
Rome was behind the law revolt was almost 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 89 

impossible. The presence of two kinds of 
law, and the inevitable injustice that arises, 
is admirably illustrated in the case of the 
trial of Jesus Christ. Had Jerusalem been 
autonomous, the mob that cried "Hosanna!" 
might have protected their Hero from the 
ecclesiastical oligarchy, which was afraid 
of the mob, and had to take Jesus by night; 
or had Rome displaced Jewish law, Jesus 
could not have been condemned. But the 
strong ecclesiastical oligarchy found in a 
combination of local law and Roman force 
just what it wanted. This same power to 
shelter injustice under one or other form 
of law must always prove an instrument 
of oppression in the hands of the strong. 

There was, moreover, only the one ex- 
ceedingly expensive appeal to Rome, and 
only the Roman citizen possessed even that. 
Hence the real effect of Roman rule was, 
undoubtedly, to break down law and to 
hand over the proletariat to very doubtful 
mercy. And in the intrigues of the Herods 
one sees how slowly Rome worked out any 
system of local poHtical government and 
administration. 

Nevertheless, Rome was a political sue- 



40 HISTORICAL SETTING 

cess. The confusion and anarchy, which 
gave her an excuse from time to time for 
interference in the affairs of neighboring 
realms, were very generally temporary; but 
they were frequent enough to greatly en- 
danger increasing culture and the ever- 
expanding commerce of the world. Even 
in Judaea the strong hand of Rome was 
needed to keep factions from flying at each 
other, and the "peace of Rome" was 
enforced, if not even-handedly, yet with 
some approach to ideal standards. Im- 
perial social control, as we understand it, 
was hardly present in even a rudimentary 
form. Political expansion and the mUitary 
defense of the central authority tended even 
to swallow up such organized social control 
as communities' always establish either by 
law or tradition. Piracy, however, was 
suppressed, the main roads roughly policed 
by soldiers, the provinces were compelled to 
keep the peace, and riot and internal wars 
were generally put down with vigor and 
even harshness. The blood of the GaK- 
laeans which Pilate mingled with the sacri- 
fice (Luke 13. 1) represented probably just 
such harsh suppression of northern worship- 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 41 

ers at Jerusalem, who probably had engaged 
in some riotous demonstration. Thus also 
Paul is rescued at Jerusalem by soldiers and 
centurions (Acts 21. 31) led by the chief 
captain, who was responsible for outward 
order. And yet even in such cases local dis- 
turbance had probably to have some poten- 
tial pohtical effect before Rome was willing 
to interfere. Ephesus could riot in the 
theater, but the asiarchs, or officials in 
charge of the festivals, and the townspeople 
were in danger of being called to account 
for the disturbance before the Proconsuls 
(Acts 19. 23-41), when they would in 
all probability have had to show that 
it was no demonstration of disloyalty to 
Caesar. 

Nothing marks the period more than the 
intense nervousness of the young imperi- 
alism. The suspicious Tiberius exiled the 
Jews from Rome, together with ''other 
Egyptian priests," probably fearing the in- 
fluence of diverse religious rites upon the 
unity of the imperial life. And Claudius 
tried to do the same thing. The origin of 
this nervousness is easy to guess, seeing 
the growing claim for imperial divinity, and 



42 HISTORICAL SETTING 

the uncompromismg attitude of the Jewish 
monotheism. 

Of the numbers in the Roman world at 
about the time of Augustus it is diflScult 
to speak. It is generally set down with 
great confidence at about fifty-five millions. 
But when one examines the data upon 
which the best authorities have had to 
found their conclusions one realizes that it 
is all vague guesswork. There are simply 
no numbers upon which it is possible to 
rely. The population may have been as 
low as thirty millions, or it may have been 
as high as eighty or ninety millions. It 
was nearly always the interest of generals 
to greatly overestimate both their own 
forces and those of the enemy. For they 
did not like to be thought weak before the 
war, nor the inglorious conquerors of weaker 
forces after the war; and yet almost all 
guessing has to be done on the basis of 
military figures, and then further guessing 
as to the proportion of women, children, 
and slaves to the fighting force. The whole 
thing is hopeless. We can only say that 
war, poverty, disease, and unnatural vice 
kept the population low, and that the food 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 43 

supply was probably not sufficient for a 
population of over one hundred millions, 
and more likely only sufficient for about 
sixty millions, which seems the generally 
accepted guess. 

Nor must we too exclusively judge the 
period from the political point of view. 
The poorer classes lived about the same 
life under all political changes. They 
watched the political horizon from the field 
and the bazaar, but with about the feel- 
ings that a London costermonger marks a 
change of ministry in England, or a Mul- 
berry Street merchant views a change of 
political party at Washington. We see 
the fears and hopes and ambitions of a 
very small class reflected in the literature 
of the period and rashly conclude that 
these were the formative hopes and am- 
bitions of the whole population, whereas 
the world of literary culture was exceed- 
ingly small, and the great mass of the 
governed class was very poor and very 
ignorant. The solemn questions that racked 
the soul of Seneca were not the doubts 
and difficulties that stirred the ordinary 
man, or, at least, they occurred to him in 



44 HISTORICAL SETTING 

very different form. And the cultured class 
was the governing class. Politics was the 
only occupation for a gentleman; even 
military life was only a secondary function 
of the ruler. It was expected, indeed, that 
a ruler could lead soldiers, but it was not 
his sole qualification. Oratory, knowledge 
of law, administrative ability were im- 
portant factors which often outweighed 
military skill. This small governing class 
was intensely interested in all legal ques- 
tions, but it is a great mistake to suppose 
that the great mass of the population cared 
in any intelligent way about the consti- 
tutional questions which bulk so largely in 
the pages of the historians. 

In some ways the political and social 
institution of the governing Roman class, 
of which we know a good deal, plays a 
much smaller part as a background for the 
gospel story than the synagogue. And it 
is unfortunate that we lack much knowl- 
edge of the synagogue in Jesus's time which 
we badly need to rightly estimate its power 
and influence. Some things may be re- 
garded as settled. The organizing idea of 
the synagogue was not public worship, but 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 45 

public instruction and public discipline. 
It formed in every community a little 
government within the greater government, 
and in various degrees its authority was 
recognized, whether in Rome or Ephesus, 
or Egypt. The power extended, of course, 
only over its own members, but this power 
could be exercised up to scourging and 
even in some cases life and death. The 
ban of the synagogue was a fearful thing, 
cutting off the Jew from all his natural, 
social, and economic life, and leaving him 
a very lonely being in a very hostile world. 

There is evidence that the synagogue was 
a most important economic factor. In 
Alexandria, for instance, the seating was 
in accordance with the trade of the attend- 
ant, and it formed the real basis, apparently, 
of much financial credit. Politically, it 
represented the local feeling, and it was a 
power with which all countries had to 
seriously count. It spread a net over the 
whole known world, in which Judaism 
was playing a most important intellectual 
and economic role. 

The numbers of Jews and synagogues 
are not easily fixed. Many of the figures 



46 HISTORICAL SETTING 

given by Philo and Josephus are open to 
grave doubt. Tacitus and Josephus both 
speak, for instance, of the banishment of 
the Jews from Rome under Tiberius, and 
Josephus gives the number of able-bodied 
Jews deported to Sardinia as four thousand, 
while Tacitus says, "Jews and Egyptian 
priests.'' Whether, now, Josephus, who 
has the support of Suetonius, or Tacitus, is 
right it is impossible to say. Moreover, 
the source of the number we do not know. 
Even in our own day numbers are generally 
greatly exaggerated, and where in ancient 
authors we read of "'millions'' and large 
round numbers, we must hesitate, more 
particularly when there is an evident apol- 
ogetic purpose apparent. Professors Schiirer 
and Harnack have gathered all the data 
that seem to exist, and Harnack thinks of 
about four to four and a half millions of 
Jews about the time of Christ. Nor is it 
possible, again, to determine how many of 
these were actually Semitic, for at this time 
the Jews were making a most widespread 
propaganda, compassing land and sea to 
make one proselyte. The wars against 
Judaism, which culminated in the fall of 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 47 

Jerusalem, must have cost Judaism much 
of her poHtical power, and with the rise of 
the Christian Church the synagogue seems 
to have been thrown on the defensive and 
propaganda largely ceased. 

Certainly, however, Judaism was a force 
in the time of Jesus of world-wide im- 
portance. In numbers it cannot have been 
much less than ten per cent of the great 
centers. It was in a most extraordinary 
degree cosmopolitan, and was only second 
to Hellenism in forming the minds of the 
intelligent classes, and only Romanism and 
Hellenism ranked higher as a force in the 
formation of the complex world of that day. 

Christianity must have greatly weakened 
it by dividing its life, and the bitter wars 
that destroyed Jerusalem were also aimed 
at the economic Judaism, which was a most 
important factor both in giving strength to 
Judaism, and also in determining the hate 
and envy to which she was exposed. For 
in those days also the Jew was hated and 
persecuted. His religion separated him 
from many of the customs and festivals 
which bound men socially together. The 
Greek coming to Rome could keep the 



48 HISTORICAL SETTING 

Roman festivals to Roman gods with the 
utmost cheerfulness and interest, and so 
entered at once into the world his neighbor 
lived in. Not so the Jew. Even those who 
were far from strict Jews could not even 
intellectually share that world of social joy 
and fellowship. Hence the Jews were hated 
as separate, misanthropic, and arrogant. 
Yet as to-day so then this separation gave 
them many economic advantages. They 
gave themselves more wholeheartedly to 
business; they sought power as the one 
means of protection against oppression and 
injustice; they pitted their brains and 
dogged passive courage and endurance 
against the brute strength of opposing num- 
bers. They were educated and trained in 
the school and synagogue, and the long 
years of crowded city quarters made them, 
no doubt, as to-day, immune to many in- 
fections from which the other populations, 
recruited from the land, easily fell victims. 
The world of Jesus's day was crowded 
with various separate protective associa- 
tions. The strangers gathered in various 
cities under their own national customs, 
and formed associations which gained some- 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 49 

times the permission to build temples. The 
Roman associations even demanded free- 
dom from taxation, and separate legal 
treatment, as to-day foreign nations demand 
the same thing from China. The Phoeni- 
cians and Sidonians formed merchant guilds, 
and the Jews did the same. These Jewish 
associations were grouped about the syna- 
gogue, and were more widely spread than 
probably any other type of association, so 
that in the time of Claudius persecution 
was checked by the fears the strength of 
these partly economic and partly religious 
associations inspired. Caesar Augustus had 
greatly encouraged these associations, and 
everywhere the Jewish ^'collegia'' were 
legally sanctioned. Moreover, they from 
time to time enjoyed special privileges. 
They were freed from military service in 
many places, as on Sabbaths they could 
neither carry arms nor niarch more than 
the rabbinical allowance. No doubt they 
paid highly for these exceptions, but even 
the power to pay shows the great influence 
of the associated Jewish life, and their 
solidarity is shown by the way they did 
actually see that the poorer brethren were 



50 HISTORICAL SETTING 

yet permitted to keep the laws' require- 
ments. 

We must also assume that there was a 
falling away from Judaism then as now. 
Sometimes it was a deliberate refusal of 
the religious obligations, sometimes it was 
an unconscious drift, sometimes it was a 
convenient compromise and comfortable 
accommodation to the life about. We need 
go no further than Josephus and Philo to 
see how eager educated and cultured 
Judaism was to commend itself to the 
influential classes in the Roman world. 
Nor was this unnatural or unreasonable. 
On the other hand, however, the pious Jew 
cherished then, as the Jew in Rivington 
Street cherishes to-day, everything in his 
law that kept his children and his women 
from sinking into the vice and disorder 
that has always surrounded the poorer 
Jewish quarters. How grateful must a 
pious Jew from Russia be for anything that 
keeps him and his loved ones from too 
great familiarity with the ^'Christianity" of 
the Bowery! The appalling vices of the 
great Orientalized centers are summed up 
by Paul in his letter to the Romans, and 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 51 

pious Judaism saw in their ceremonial ex- 
clusiveness not only a barrier, but almost 
the only barrier between it and the Jewish 
family. Moreover, then, as now, no doubt 
he realized that when the Jew became 
indifferent to his religion he was exceedingly 
likely to sink into this quagmire and to 
lose not only his Judaism but his manhood 
and character. Hence there was a real 
moral interest in maintaining unimpaired 
the ceremonial exclusiveness with which he 
was reproached. 

The political importance of Greece was 
nothing in the time of Jesus. But Hellen- 
ism, a conglomerate of Grecian thinking 
and Oriental modes of life and religion, had 
overspread the world, and gave to the life 
of the times we are considering such 
measure of unity as it possessed. Nor do 
the sharp disputes and bitter controversies 
about what seem to us unimportant details 
really indicate political unreality. The 
actual happiness and wellbeing of the 
ruled class depended far more upon the 
spirit of the local rulers than upon the 
theories of the central government. The 
turbulence of Ephesus or of Jerusalem, the 



52 HISTORICAL SETTING 

constant danger of riot and disorder, was 
the one check upon tyranny, but it must 
often have been an effective check. The 
taking of Jesus was by night ''for fear of 
the people." Paul could also appeal for 
protection to the local government, because 
it was responsible for the order of the town, 
and any disorder could and would be used 
by the enemies of the governor to under- 
mine his political influence at Rome. Nor 
are there evidences lacking that the ready- 
tongued Greek, with his quick mind and 
experience in local affairs, was a wily and 
dangerous critic of the politicians to whom 
he happened to be opposed. Much also 
that goes by the name of Roman law is 
really Greek and bears the marks of the 
political experience of the town where the 
Greek had done his best work. In the 
Greek word jpolis (or "'town'') as it enters 
into "'politicaF' and ''polite'' we have an 
indication of what the Grecian town organ- 
ization had done for the Hellenistic society 
in which Christianity took its first roots. 

The political influence of the Orient was 
the main cause of the rise of despotism and 
personal government. Why it is that the 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 53 

Orient has seemingly been able to breed 
only despotisms remains an unanswered 
riddle. Whether it was slavery, or the 
economic conditions, or the climate, or the 
history of all government as rising out of 
the patriarchal family, and in the Orient 
never passing beyond it, it remains a fact 
that the same essential stock evolved relative 
democracies in Greece, Rome, Gaul, and 
Germania, but in Asia Minor, India, Baby- 
lon, Assyria, and the Orient generally gave 
rise only to personal military despotisms. 
The Jewish democracy was also on the 
way to the same goal, according to the 
testimony of Amos and Isaiah, when the 
whole national development was prov- 
identially stopped by the exile, and the 
democratic elements of the Hebrew life 
were conserved in a marked degree in its 
religious organization. 

In this ''Orientalizing" of the Roman 
world Egypt had its full share. The ancient 
culture of Egypt, its magic and learning, its 
wealth and mystic beauty seem always to 
have woven a spell about the Northern 
imagination. Rome seems to have ruled 
in Egypt with a particularly light hand, 



54 HISTORICAL SETTING 

and as to-day it is the model provincial 
government of England, so it was in Roman 
days only most gently governed, and ap- 
parently relatively well. In the New Testa- 
ment, beyond the story in Matthew of the 
flight into Egypt (Matt. 2, 13) we have 
almost no indication of the great influence 
Egypt was exerting. But early Christianity 
through the monastery and neoplatonism 
was soon deeply and profoundly affected. 
Priestly government of Egypt was no doubt 
one of the influences that entered into the 
imperial compromise, by which a hierarchy 
struck hands with a military despotism to 
give government to the world, and that in 
churchly shape. But the gospel story re- 
flects little of Egypt's life and nothing of 
her political influence. The same may be 
said of northern Africa, whose influence 
was later so great. The gospel story is 
unaffected, and we have simply no trace 
of its life in the pages of the New Testament. 
The first field for Christianity after it 
left Palestine was most naturally Asia 
Minor and Greece. Politically, they were 
subordinated entirely to imperial Rome, but 
the local spirit had not been crushed, and 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 55 

the old urban organization still persisted, 
and, indeed, persisted to some extent as a 
model for other lands and ages. After the 
defeat of Antiochus the Great, in B. C. 190, 
at Magnesia, it was only a matter of time 
when Rome should rule supreme; but the 
advance was slow, and when at last Pompey 
defeated Mithridates the Roman Senate 
(B. C. 63) only made Bithynia-Pontus in 
the North and Cilicia in the South provinces. 
But these were the keys to the whole of 
Asia Minor. The independence of Galatia, 
Cappadocia, and Lydia was merely nom- 
inal. This was then the political bond 
between Rome's Western conquests and her 
Eastern dominion. And through this high- 
way passed back from the East the great 
religious impulses of Judaism, Christianity, 
and, ultimately, Mohammedanism. The 
period of prosperity and peace for this 
high plateau, an exceptional period in its 
history, was the time when Christianity was 
born, and its rapid spread over the Western 
world was made possible only by the cir- 
cumstances of its political dependence upon 
Rome. From the close of the sixth century 
of our era to the present, war and subjection 



56 HISTORICAL SETTING 

to merely predatory forces have reduced 
it again to the wild and uncultivated 
condition in which successive nomad and 
military forces had found it before Greece 
and Rome gave it temporary prosperity 
through Hellenistic culture and Roman 
peace. 

Alexandria in Africa and the cities of 
Asia Minor were important formative fac- 
tors in the final institutional Christianity 
that became the official religion of the 
world. The local provincial government is 
seen in the episcopal forms so soon taken 
over by the Church. In the Revelation to 
John the messengers of the various churches 
of "Asia" are the representatives of the 
churches in the Roman province, which 
embraced at that time the western part of 
Asia Minor and the islands of the west 
coast. Nor could a more favorable center 
be found for reaching the world than these 
cities. The gospel might be swallowed up 
in cosmopolitan Rome, but in Smyrna and 
Ephesus centers were formed through which 
was to pour the tide of life flowing from 
East to West and back again. In these 
cities the small Christian communities 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 57 

learned the art of organization and of 
government. The episcopal forms which 
early became fashionable were a mixture 
of the Jewish synagogue and the provincial 
and urban governments. Of course these 
forms had slowly to be adapted to the 
growing and changing needs of the rising 
Church, but the provincial interorganiza- 
tion, and the general outline of the city 
supervision of all the churches in one city 
bear the marks of provincial experience, and 
reflect a good deal of the aims and char- 
acter of these communities of Asia Minor. 

Such was the general political situation 
at the time that Christianity was born. 
No one could predict its political sig- 
nificance; at the same time all religion in 
those days had a local, national, or inter- 
national political significance. And between 
the lines of the Gospels and in the chapters 
of the Acts of the Apostles we see the 
political jealousy at once aroused. The 
primary cause for persecution was this polit- 
ical meaning that religion then always had, 
and only the relative feebleness and insignif- 
icance of the early beginnings could save it 
from extinction. This obscurity is, how- 



58 HISTORICAL SETTING 

ever, abundantly evidenced by the entire 
ignoring of the movement by educated and 
literary men of the Roman and Hellenistic 
world. To us in the light of what has 
happened Jesus and Paul are great and 
important figures, but what significance 
could two obscure Jews have for the proud, 
prosperous classes of Rome ? It is absurd 
to lay great stress upon the silence of litera- 
ture in the matter of early Christianity. 
Even now we are only beginning to take an 
artistic and literary interest in humble life, 
and in the time of the Caesars humble life 
had no place to speak of in art or literature, 
and early Christianity was wholly found 
among men and women more or less 
identified with the humble classes. What 
do we know of Mithraism from classic 
authors? And yet this was a movement 
under their eyes of transcendent importance 
for the army and the nation. 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 59 



CHAPTER III 

The Economic World of Jesus's Day 

CONTENTS 

The attitude of the early Church toward wealth — The 
class to which the gospel made its first appeal — The 
classes of that day — The slavery of that day — 
The freedman class and its rise — The persecution of 
the Christian Church — The financial strength of the 
Church — The purity of the early Church examined. 

LITERATURE 

Christian Rogge, "Der irdische Besitz im Neuen 
Testament," 1897. O. Cone, **Rich and Poor in the 
New Testament," 1902. G. A. Deissmann, "Licht von 
Osten" (German and English translation), 1909. Uhl- 
horn, "Christliche Liebest'atigkeit in der alten Kirche," 
1882 (German and English translation). For slavery, 
see the article in Encyclopaedia Britannica, last edition. 
Armand Riviere, "L'eglise et I'esclavage," 1864. Con- 
sult also F. Overbeck, "Studien, zur Geschichte der 
alten Kirche," 1875. 

The attitude of the three early Gospels 
toward the possessors of wealth has been 
much discussed of late. The Gospel of 
Luke has generally been regarded as the 



60 HISTORICAL SETTING 

one most distinctly proletarian in its sym- 
pathy, whereas Matthew seems to soften 
the sayings of Jesus as given by Luke. 
Luke says, ^'Blessed are ye poor/' Mat- 
thew says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." 
Luke says, distinctly, "But woe unto you 
that are rich, for ye have received your 
consolation." Whereas in the series of woes 
pronounced by Matthew (23. 13-33) the 
contrast is not between the rich and poor, 
but between the persecuted Church and the 
scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites. At the same 
time not too much should be made of 
this difference in the face of the obvious 
attitude of Matthew, if not toward the rich 
as such, yet toward the class possessing 
authority. In the letter of James the tone 
toward the rich as such bears witness to 
two things: first, the predominantly humble 
character of the early Church, and, sec- 
ondly, the fact that early some rich fol- 
lowers were found among the poor. God 
had chosen the poor who were rich in faith, 
and rich men had oppressed them and 
drawn them to the judgment seat; at the 
same time the presence of rich men is 
frequent enough in the assembly to make 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 61 

the cringing to them an evil that had to 
be rebuked. And the letters of Paul bear 
witness to the fact that some had houses 
large enough to form centers for the church 
to assemble in; although anyone knowing 
how Orientals can crowd into a room will 
recognize the fact that the demands for 
mere area are far less in the Orient than 
with us. In the Acts of the Apostles the 
picture is of rich and poor, with the rich, 
however, sharing in primitive communistic 
fashion with the poor. That early "'some of 
Caesar's household" were counted among 
the Christians does not tell us much until we 
know just what places they had in Caesar's 
household. Paul's letter to Philemon, one of 
the most beautiful in literature, shows that 
one early Christian not only had a house 
large enough for the "^assembly," but was 
rich enough to own a slave. 

The question, then, arises. To what 
class did the appeal of the cross come 
with most force .^ The discussions called 
out by Deissmann and others point to 
facts that seem to indicate that the gospel 
came first to the small craftsman, and 
the wandering artizan, often of Jewish 



62 HISTORICAL SETTING 

race, sometimes of Jewish faith, but only 
as a convert, and often as a Hellen or 
Syrian or member of that great denational- 
ized mass of men whose analogue is found 
to-day in the Turkish empire. Roman 
wars had set hundreds of thousands adrift, 
and Roman peace enabled many of these 
to follow their trade in a restless search 
for economic advantage. 

In this connection we must entirely dis- 
place from our mind the class divisions of 
our own day. The crowded bazaars were 
not only selling shops but the workshops 
in which the things sold were made. As 
to-day in Cairo, Jerusalem, or Constan- 
tinople you can wait and see a fez, or pair 
of shoes, or a garment made before your 
eyes and then bargain for its possession, 
so the whole of the manufacture of the 
world was linked at once with its use or 
exchange. Commerce was, indeed, in man- 
ufactured wares, as well as in raw materials, 
but manufacture purely for exchange and 
exportation was almost unknown. 

Nor was agriculture as sharply separated 
from craftsmanship as to-day. Each peas- 
ant village was a self-sustaining unit, as it 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 63 

is even now, for the most part, in India and 
the Orient. The fact that Joseph was a 
housebuilder does not imply that he was 
what we understand by that term, but may 
mean simply that among the farming peas- 
ants he was the housebuilder, as another 
was the blacksmith, and another, perhaps, 
the weaver. Peasant Europe in some places 
presents to-day a state of affairs not very 
different. Jesus's figures are drawn not 
from the small crafts but from the fields 
and the activity of a peasant, or a fisher- 
man; and in his pictures the "King'' is the 
superlatively powerful person we find in 
the peasant tales of all lands. 

This would imply that not even slaves 
early entered largely into the Christian 
Church, although, as we see from Phile- 
mon, and Paul's early advice to slaves, 
some were soon attracted. At this time 
slavery presented two aspects strongly con- 
trasted, as in the Southern States just before 
the Civil War slavery also meant two things 
entirely different in their inner significance. 
We may call them "'luxury slavery" and ^'^ex- 
ploitation slavery." The household servant 
of the very rich had no doubt many hard- 



64 HISTORICAL SETTING 

ships. He was liable to punishment, often 
very severe, and was in no sense master of 
himself. But, on the other hand, he was 
sure of food and shelter, generally of a far 
superior kind to the poor laborers and 
craftsmen about him. As in Virginia, in 
the fifties, this slavery was probably des- 
perately unprofitable. It was a luxury only 
a few could afford, and ended often in 
emancipation as a reward for good service, 
or that the owner might gain the reputation 
of being a good master. The enormous 
freedman class in Rome rose in part out 
of this desire of patrons to be politically 
powerful in the slums and stews of the 
great city, and a study of slavery in the 
pages of the Roman versions of Greek 
plays shows that in Athens and Rome the 
same forces were at work which thoughtful 
men have pointed out in American history. 
One great difference, of course, separated 
ancient slavery from American bondage. 
The slaves were substantially of the same 
race and color as the master class. Hence 
arose in "exploitation slavery'' a difficulty 
less felt in the cottonfields of the South. 
For the purpose of industrially exploiting 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 65 

a fellow man slavery is not economically 
advantageous. The master must maintain 
the slave, and driving him at his work 
requires constant and expensive super- 
vision. Where "gangs" can be handled by 
an overseer, whether on the cottonfields of 
the Southern States or on the great "lati- 
fundia" estates of Rome, he may perhaps 
be economically employed, but the small 
slave craftsman whose skill is his own 
cannot be really supervised successfully. 
Hence the wage relationship was rapidly 
supplanting the slave relationship as a 
method of economic prudence, and the 
freedmen were largely skilled craftsmen 
from whom pride and hunger could get a 
great deal more work than the demands of 
a master. 

Many evidences point to this class as the 
one in w hich Christianity gained its earliest 
victories. These men were poor, despised, 
and yet intelligent; and they were the coming 
masters of the world. While wars and feuds 
played havoc with the aristocracy and 
decimated the plutocracy, the ever increas- 
ing freedman class, led and taught in many 
instances by the Jews — one thinks of Paul 



66 HISTORICAL SETTING 

as a tent-weaver — was increasing in eco- 
nomic power, and was soon to grasp after 
political recognition. And although the 
class as a class was poor, individuals in it 
rose to wealth and influence and these seem 
often to have put all they had and all they 
were at the disposal of the religion that had 
claimed them. Moreover, this class could 
and did travel widely. Their tools were 
simple, and wherever they went it was an 
easy matter to establish a shop and work- 
shop. Thus Paul supported himself by 
the work of his hands and was not charge- 
able to his early converts. And to drift 
from city to city and place to place became 
easy for the followers of the cross, who 
gained new converts wherever they went. 

At the same time this class did not corre- 
spond to our proletariat of relatively 
unskilled or only narrowly trained labor. 
It was not a "factory,'' nor "a> mining,'' 
nor an "unskilled day-labor" class. Many 
of its members must have had considerable 
capital and have employed many sub- 
ordinates. It was probably painfully lacking 
in any sense of class solidarity, and one of 
the benefits conferred on it by Christianity 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 67 

was a sense of organized solidarity, such 
as gave the class final power under Con- 
stantine. 

Could we think of the Dutch farmers of 
South Africa expanding and conquering the 
world, and establishing an agricultural 
aristocracy with a slave contingency, we 
would have in many respects a picture of 
the Roman world before it was more or 
less completely ''Hellenized" and "Oriental- 
ized/' That such a community should look 
out on the culture and wealth of the older 
Orient with covetous desire for its posses- 
sions, spiritual and material, was only human. 
Moreover, Italy was rapidly becoming de- 
pendent upon Egypt and the rest of North 
Africa for food and raw material. This 
triumphant agrarian aristocracy never seems 
really to have embraced Christianity. It 
not only was itself conservative, but even 
the *'new men'" who joined its ranks were 
made conservative by its atmosphere and 
traditions. 

It has often been pointed out that Rome 
never really originated anything. Carthage 
taught her road-making and Phcenicia and 
Greece navigation. Her art and literature 



68 HISTORICAL SETTING 

were taken from Greece, and even her 
boasted law was far more the product of 
Grecian reflection than Roman originaHty. 
She had, however, the capacity for wide 
and discriminating assimilation. As con- 
quest ceased gradually to supply the slaves 
and riches the aristocracy needed for its 
increasing luxury, Rome had not the ca- 
pacity to evolve a new and more fruitful 
method of production. The fall of the 
Roman aristocracy was, therefore, an 
economic necessity and only a matter of 
time. The new Jewish-Hellenistic crafts- 
man class, made up of freedmen of all 
nationalities, was evolving a new industrial 
guild order; and these guilds w^ere dom- 
inated by religious hopes and held together 
in religious bonds. It is becoming more 
and more evident that the religions intro- 
duced widely from Egypt, Persia, and the 
Orient were highly organized protective 
communities, and that Mithraism, and the 
Cybele mystery, and other religious sects 
were economic brotherhoods and the fore- 
runners of the religious guilds of the Middle 
Ages. They organized the economic life of 
soldiers, craftsmen, freedmen, and the float- 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 69 

ing town populations. Chief among these 
forces was Christianity. It was more than 
an emotional religion; it was a new brother- 
hood with a new economic life. Thus the 
second letter to the Thessalonians early 
begins the long series of admonitions to 
work which we find all down the early 
Christian literature. He that did not work 
was not to eat. Thrift and self-maintenance 
became the cardinal virtues for the growing 
freedman class, and slowly the power of 
the class was evolved from the growing 
prosperity of this new industrialism. And 
as it grew in power the organization of 
the Church made its sense of solidarity 
increasingly a political as well as an 
economic factor of the first importance. 

Already in the Acts of the Apostles we 
see the economic organization, with its care 
for widows and its provision for the poor 
and the wandering brethren, taking shape. 
It is a misinterpretation of the whole 
situation to call this by the name of 
socialism or communism. It was simply the 
expression of a strong sense of group 
solidarity with a certain primitive group 
communism as an ideal, never, however, 



70 HISTORICAL SETTING 

fully realized or capable of realization. 
This world, we must always remember, was 
very poor. Wealth is always the power to 
tax, and this power may rest upon the 
ownership of the bodies of men (slavery), 
or of the land they must use (feudalism), 
or of the producing machinery (capitalism), 
or of the political machinery by which they 
are ruled. At the same time the wealth 
of the taxing class is dependent upon the 
producing power of those taxed. And in 
the world of Jesus's day that power was 
very limited; hence the power-possessing 
class that owned the political machinery, 
the army, and the civil officials, as well as 
the land, even when it ground the producing 
class most, could never exceed a certain 
pressure without producing revolutionary 
despair. 

It is not difficult to guess the motive that 
led to the persecution of the early Christian 
Church. It was not religious intolerance 
such as we find in the Middle Ages; it was 
jealousy of the economic and social power 
that the new organization quickly evolved. 
The solidarity of the empire was threatened. 
The emperors strove to establish on the 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 71 

basis of an imperial cult a new kind of 
national or imperial unity. The main 
hindrance was this new religious guild, or 
brotherhood, cosmopolitan in character, 
strong in its religious enthusiasm and its 
ethical purpose; it was, in fact, the states- 
manlike and far-seeing rulers who saw the 
danger and attempted by force to suppress 
the Church as a growing menace to the 
empire. 

Of course religious fanaticism was 
aroused, and no persecution is wholly on 
one ground; local dislikes, race jealousy, 
prejudices of one kind or another must be 
appealed to. When, however, we face the 
curious question. Why was Christianity 
persecuted and Mithraism, for instance, let 
alone .^ the most obvious answer is this 
freedman class character w^ith its economic 
meaning. The other cults perhaps claimed 
no such exclusiveness as did Christianity, 
but that is hardly sufficient in itself to 
account for the hostility. When we realize, 
however, that Christianity was organizing 
this new economic force in the empire, and 
that the thrift and industry, for which 
soon Christians became noted, was making 



72 HISTORICAL SETTING 

this class increasingly powerful, we have a 
motive strong enough to account for the 
long series of outbreaks in all parts of the 
Roman world against Christianity. The 
aristocratic character of the attempt of 
Julian to restore paganism after the com- 
promise with Rome, and the well-known 
facts of pagan survival in aristocratic circles 
long after the nominal triumph of the 
church, point us back to the beginnings, 
where we see emphasized, not, indeed, the 
proletarian but the thrifty freedman char- 
acter of the movement as over against 
aristocracy. 

This accounts also for the long silence 
in literary circles in regard to Christianity. 
It was not on the horizon of a class that, 
however lowly in its own origin, catered 
almost solely to the power-possessing upper 
class. Persecution no doubt made the 
Church still more mobile, and the doctrine 
and church organization were spread and 
even strengthened, gaining in the very fires 
of persecution a cohesion and unity which 
no other rival cult possessed. Moreover, 
in a military society, with an aristocracy 
corrupted and depraved by wealth and 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 73 

tyranny, and a slave population degraded 
and weakened by the conditions of its 
subjection, together with a frightfully ig- 
norant and debased proletariat, a freedman 
church with growing means, and an ever- 
expanding constituency, giving systematic 
religious and ethical instruction and super- 
vising the morals and industry of its 
membership, was bound to become the 
dominant factor in the situation. 

The admirable organization of the Church 
rendered it also financially strong. It 
could send large sums to the "poor saints" 
at Jerusalem, and easily maintained its own 
poor, ministered to its own sick or in 
prison, and this bound together one class 
at least in the face of coming storm. 

It is thought that even in the time of 
Constantine the Church had obtained influ- 
ence over only about ten per cent of the 
empire's population. But in such a hetero- 
geneous mass, with so much that was 
weakening and demoralizing, the young 
Christian Church, with all its faults, came 
as a deliverer in matters of body, soul, and 
mind, for the admonitions not only to love 
one another, but to win converts by loving 



74 HISTORICAL SETTING 

helpfulness, though often obscured or even 
forgotten, were never wholly missing in the 
preaching of the early Church. The sense 
of solidarity was increased by persecution 
and opposition, and secret signs and pass- 
words, as well as letters from well-known 
bishops and leaders, gave assurance to the 
wanderer that wherever there were Chris'- 
tians he could appeal to them with certain 
hope of help. 

This was early abused, and even in Paul's 
time, or shortly after, it was necessary to 
warn those who would not work that they 
should not eat. The early literature 
abounds also in directions for guarding 
against imposture and corruptions of the 
faith by wandering and unauthorized 
teachers. And we see here also a motive 
for strict guarding of the faith. Orthodoxy 
was not a purely intellectual interest; few 
had, or even now have, an intellectual 
interest in theological questions as such. 
But unity was a very vital interest, and 
all heterodoxy was divisive, and so weaken- 
ing. The very economic strength of the 
organization was involved. Hence we very 
early (in John's letters) find formulae by 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 75 

which to separate those who are to be 
received and loved as brethren from those 
professing to be Christians, but not really 
yielding to the authority of the Church. 

As the Church grew stronger and more 
powerful complaints are heard that its 
purity was suffering. But these complaints, 
though no doubt based upon facts all too 
serious, yet must be somewhat carefully 
reviewed. The Church, as we see from 
Paul's letters, was never pure either in 
morals or doctrine. The ideals placed before 
these freedmen could only partly act upon 
their lives, and only slowly organize them. 
No doubt conformity to formulae and loud 
and sincere professions of belief did duty 
then, as always, for conduct and atoned 
for moral laxness in certain circles. And 
increasing prosperity has its own special 
dangers. So we early find covetousness 
rebuked and lovers of money seem from the 
early literature to have very soon corrupted 
the early generosity. The almsgiving of 
the Church then assumes a quasi-official 
form, and we find even in Acts complaints 
about the administration and an official or- 
ganization to remedy the evil. 



76 HISTORICAL SETTING 

The picture in first Clemens of a Christian 
Church is no doubt rather ideal than 
absolutely true, but it reveals a relatively 
prosperous and peaceful organization. Soon 
the treasury of the Church is a source of 
strength. Each Lord's Day (1 Cor. 16. 2) 
the collection was taken and distributed in 
the name of the Lord to those in need. 
Since persecution might at any time rob 
the family of the breadwinner, it is no 
wonder that the early Church sought 
eagerly to make all feel that at least the 
widows and children would be cared for 
by the love of the brotherhood. Nor was it 
a small factor in the growing solidarity of 
the young Church that one congregation 
sent aid to another when need came. So 
Paul collected for Jerusalem, and so when 
persecution swept over one province others 
came to the rescue of the persecuted with 
alms and money. Thus, as the growing 
prosperity was seldom checked by universal 
persecution, nowhere could the Church be 
stamped out because of the support that 
always came from some region that was 
spared. This growing economic prosperity 
must be remembered because it explains 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 77 

two things: first, the jealous hate of the 
persecuting community, and, secondly, the 
rapidly growing influence, which was out of 
all proportion to the numbers of the faith. 

One last thing also needs emphasis. The 
basis of the prosperity of the freedman 
class was handicraft and skill in the trades. 
Hence it was impossible by persecution to 
do more than drive this skill away. And 
just as Judaism in the Middle Ages never 
could be persecuted beyond a certain point 
because its services were too much needed 
to be dispensed with, so the small Christian 
communities could never be really wholly 
broken up. They were becoming daily 
more and more economically necessary. 
Upon this usefulness all the early apologists 
lay emphasis; and it accounts for the fact 
that times of bitter persecution because of 
economic jealousy were followed by times 
of protection and encouragement because of 
the indispensable character of their services. 
And as Christianity by its preached morality 
eliminated economic waste of all sorts, the 
Church grew stronger and stronger day 
by day. 



78 HISTORICAL SETTING 



CHAPTER IV 

The Religious World of Jesus's Day 

CONTENTS 

The polytheism of the period — The test of truth in 
those days — The place of fear in religion — The rising 
influence of the Orient — The mystery-worship — Its 
relation to ethics — Its final goal — The asceticism of 
the age — The Messianic vision of Judaism — The be- 
lief in demons — Luxury and corruption — The stoic 
reaction — The common attitude toward religion — The 
Jews and the religions of their day. 

LITERATURE 

F. Cumont, **Les religions orientales," 1906 (French 
and English translation). Cicero, *'De Natura Deorum" 
and "De Divinatione." Consult also P. Wendland, 
*'Die hellenistisch-rOmische Kultur in ihren Bezie- 
hungen zu Judentum und Christentum," 1907. J. L. 
Ussing, *'Erziehung und Jugendunterricht bei den 
Griechen und Rdmern, 1885. For Asceticism, see 
articles by author and others in Hastings's "Dictionary 
of Religion and Ethics." On mystery worship, see 
article in Herzog's "Real Encyclopedia" (also English 
translation). For the Messianic Conception in Jesus's 
day, see J. Drummond, "The Jewish Messias," 1877, and 
Holtzmann in Weber and Holtzmann's "Geschichte des 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 79 

Volkes Israel," Vol. ii, 191ff., with full literature. For 
demon worship, see articles in Hastings's "Dictionary 
of Religion and Ethics" by various authors with full 
literature. 

It is now time to glance at the religious 
world of Jesus's time. The researches of 
such scholars as Harnack, Deissmann, Die- 
trichs, Cumont, Wendland, and others have 
thrown a flood of light upon this most 
absorbing theme. Much still remains to 
be made clear, but the outlines are now 
fairly plain. Polytheism has as at least 
one of its roots the coming together of 
small groups or tribes, with each a par- 
ticular tribal god. The strongest group 
contributes the leading divinity, and the 
others become either secondary gods or 
sink down to demons, heroes, or spirits. 
Sometimes the leading gods are so alike 
in all but name that they are worshiped 
as one god under different names, or 
actually absorb one another. In the rapid 
spread of the Roman empire it was not 
possible for this process of assimilation to 
bring any kind of unity into the thousands 
of different worships. Rome had to be 
catholic and accept all religions on some 



80 HISTORICAL SETTING 

sort of a compromise. Some worshiped the 
gods of the land they lived in. Some brought 
their home gods with them to any strange 
land they visited. Some sought to identify 
all the various gods with their native 
deities. Others tried to discover the power- 
ful gods and to worship them. But the 
general result was confusion for the common 
mind and a vague, increasing skepticism 
for the more intelligent, with some attempt 
at philosophical adjustment by a very few. 
For the vulgar mind even to-day the 
ordinary test of truth is 'Vhat everybody 
says.'' And fashioned into a formula, this 
reads, "what all men everywhere and 
always have believed.'' Even Scotch phi- 
losophy thought that if it could find a few 
things everybody believed it would have a 
fulcrum for the lever of knowledge. Hence 
it happened that in the time of Jesus the 
religions of the world were in a state of 
wild confusion because there were no 
universally accepted gods and no bodies of 
beliefs upon which all could agree. The 
world was not irreligious. On the con- 
trary, it was "'too religious," and terribly 
afraid of not worshiping some god who 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 81 

ought to be worshiped but remained un- 
known, hence altars to "'unknown gods/' 
for fear of the wrath of a forgotten or 
neglected deity. Even the most intelligently 
skeptical were dreadfully superstitious, and 
fear mingled with all worship. There is 
no evidence that religion begins with fear. 
It has its roots no doubt in a sense of need 
and feeling of awe and reverence before the 
unknown and mysterious. On the other 
hand, all primitive religion seems linked 
with joy, feasting, dancing, harvest festivals, 
new moons, and good cheer. But fear has 
a place that as religion becomes degraded 
soon endangers all else. 

The confusions of the Roman empire, 
however, laid especial emphasis upon fear. 
The gods a group in Asia Minor worshiped, 
for example, found themselves opposed by 
the terrible gods of Rome. When in battle 
they were overthrown, what was to be the 
attitude of the worshiper.^ If he still 
worshiped beaten gods, would not Rome's 
powerful friends pursue and punish him? 
If he changed over to Rome's gods, how 
would his own gods deal with him ? Was 
he sure of protection from their just anger ? 



82 HISTORICAL SETTING 

Trembling compromises filled the Roman 
world. Judaism had faced this awful ques- 
tion at the time of the exile. Many had 
no doubt fallen away to the gods of the 
conqueror, but a chosen few had found 
deliverance in the faith that Jehovah was 
the only true God, and that even in despair 
and misfortune he would never wholly 
desert his faithful follower nor deliver him 
up wholly to his foes. And in this increas- 
ing faith in one God Judaism survived the 
shocks of conquest, and in the survival and 
prosperity of the synagogue found evidence 
for their faith. Then in the synagogue and 
under the divine teaching of Jeremiah and 
the school of Isaiah men learned God as 
an individual experience, and came to trust 
him beyond all the storms of life and fate 
(Job). 

But for many reasons Roman paganism 
and platonic philosophy could not thus 
take men by the hand and lead them out 
of the mists and fogs of polytheism. One 
like Plutarch could rest in his little Greek 
village and find platonic defense for the 
Delphic mystery worship that he loved, 
and honestly feed his soul with the religious 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 83 

values of the past in which he dreamed and 
brooded, but the average man was tossed and 
wearied by the rising storms of disputation 
and found httle rest in the vast structures 
of polytheistic faith. 

As antiquity was for the common mind 
the only test of truth, men sought readily 
the stores of Eastern lore. Egypt and 
India, Babylon and Persia were old beyond 
all computation, and there religion had 
ever thrived. Even the glories and con- 
quests of Greece were young in comparison. 
So it came about that to the polytheistic 
confusions of Rome, Greece, and Asia 
Minor were added the mystery religions of 
Babylon, Persia, India, and Egypt. How 
much early Greece took over from the 
Orient it is now impossible to definitely 
say, but Phoenicia and Asia Minor had 
been the paths by which Oriental wisdom 
had found its way early into Greek life. 
The mysteries may even have had a native 
soil upon which they grew. The leading 
characteristic of the mystery worship was 
sacramental initiation into the actual divine 
life. In the mystery the worshiper came 
into direct contact with the life of the god 



84 HISTORICAL SETTING 

and learned the secrets of the world above 
and below. 

The mystery-worship seems also to have 
been cosmic in character; that is to say, it 
aimed at giving a complete view of the 
world. It explained evil, taught the real 
meaning of springtime and harvest, vested 
the stars with their true significance, and 
gave men and women a point of view from 
which to see all life. In general, this 
explanation dealt with the contrast between 
light and darkness, between spirit and 
matter, and seems generally to have fol- 
lowed the lines of a dualism between 
flesh and spirit, in which the flesh is the 
lower principle of evil and the spirit the 
divine and permanent reality. 

Thus into mystery-worship seems to have 
come the ethical. It was a method of 
purification. The grosser dross of the flesh 
was laid aside, perhaps, for a little in 
mystic rapture and the spirit communed 
undefiled with the eternal Spirit of purity. 
The initiated one was taught a new life 
of holiness and of divine purity. In sacred 
song, in sacramental meditation, in solemn 
ritual he could renew his spiritual life and 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 85 

prepare for the final sloughing off of the 
body and eternal entrance upon the life of 
the gods; for the worship of the mysteries 
seems to have had this also in common — 
that the end was redemption of the indi- 
vidual soul in an after life. That Judaism 
had no doctrine of immortality seems ab- 
surd. In the face of stories like the Witch 
of Endor, and expressions like the close of 
Isaiah, it is impossible to believe that any 
period of Judaism was without definite 
doctrine of an eternal unseen world for the 
soul. At the same time this was never the 
center of interest in prophetic or Levitical 
Judaism. Here the mystery-worship is in 
great contrast with Judaism. It was an 
individual extrication from the evils of the 
flesh that seems to have been the fairest 
promise of the mystery religions, while 
for Judaism the redemption was of the 
world and the nation as the triumphant 
outcome of Messianic intervention. It is 
hardly fair with our scanty material to 
dogmatically assert that the redemption of 
mystery-worship was rather mechanical and 
magical than ethical and religious, but cer- 
tainly this seems to have been prevailingly 



86 HISTORICAL SETTING 

the case. In strong contrast with the 
teachings of the Old Testament or the 
ethical philosophy of the Stoics, salvation 
was made rather a magical physical cleans- 
ing than an inward moral regeneration. 

These cults had one great message for 
the age. They disassociated the religious 
life from geographical boundaries. The 
Mithra cult was the religion that caught 
the attention of the Roman soldiers, taken 
as they were from every clime and nation. 
Anyone going to Wiesbaden may see the 
little Mithra chapel in the midst of the 
Roman camp at the Saalburg, with the 
rock chapel, the sky and stars, and the 
bull slain by the hero-god. The labors of 
Cumont have given us almost all we can 
know from the rock inscriptions and con- 
stantly repeated symbols of this Mithra cult, 
but the early Christian writers describe it 
in terms that show how its life became in 
many ways the model from which a young 
and energetic Church took what it could 
use for its own purposes. Tertullian holds 
Mithras worship up as a warning, and 
yet marks it as in some sense like 
Christianity, only it is a "perversion of 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 87 

demons." It was never popular in the 
purely Hellenic world, but probably only 
because that world was already preempted 
by other mystery cults, like that of Cybele, 
the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Magna Ma- 
ter, and many that we know nothing of, ob- 
scure cults whose very names are uncertain 
and whose tenets are utterly unknown. 

In all, however, men sought a "mediator'' 
— some one who at once revealed the 
divine life and gave assurance to the 
initiated that knowledge, truth, and salva- 
tion might be his portion. In varied degrees 
the condition of obtaining these things was 
moral conduct, and, in general, was linked 
with some sort of asceticism. 

This too was a note of the religious world 
of that day. Men sought salvation or 
holiness in asceticism. The holy man was 
one who had subdued the body. Where 
this came from it is now impossible to say. 
Asceticism, as meaning separation from the 
body and its passions, was foreign to the 
early religion of Greece, Judaism, and 
Rome. In Egypt we come upon the sources 
of it as it entered into Roman Catholic 
Christianity, through the work of Atha- 



88 HISTORICAL SETTING 

nasius; but it came also from the East, 
India or Persia, and linked itself readily 
to any type of pronounced dualism. Ascet- 
icism may be understood broadly as simple 
self-control, and moral exercise leading to 
such self-control. In this sense all men 
are ascetics who attach any importance to 
self-mastery. But historically asceticism 
means more than that. It is based upon 
the belief that the body is vile and all its 
functions evils, and that purity can be ob- 
tained only at the expense of the body. 
Thus the world of Jesus saw men ready 
to crucify the flesh by various fastings and 
exercises, by celibacy and the life of the 
hermit and anchorite. Early Christianity 
was too thoroughly linked with Judaism 
and the Old Testament to have much 
interest in such a view of life. It was too 
full of the joy and freedom of the forgiven 
life, the free grace of God, the love of the 
Father, and the sense of present fellowship 
with God in Christ Jesus to be much 
troubled by asceticism. Paul felt the 
danger, however, and in Galatians, Colos- 
sians, and Ephesians guards the Church 
from it by laying down the first principles of 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 89 

Christian freedom, and the real significance 
of the life in Christ. 

Around the Church, however, there was 
the atmosphere of a pronounced asceticism. 
Men's hearts were filled with the fears and 
confusions of a dying economic world. 
Oppression and injustice bred despondency 
and "other-worldliness.'' This world was 
hopelessly evil, and peace could be found 
only in entire renunciation of it, and 
flight from the whole world of sense. It 
is impossible to say how far India and 
Buddhism had a direct influence. The 
contacts were more constant than was once 
supposed, and Buddhists wandered all over 
the world. At the same time it may easily 
be that the same circumstances produced 
the same results, and that this despondent 
asceticism was the product of the disordered 
world rather than the preaching of the 
Buddhist missionaries. Even on Judaism 
it had its effects and, as far as we know 
anything of the Essenes, they represented 
within its borders the influence of this kind 
of thinking. 

The despondency of Judaism took other 
forms. The old visions of a Messianic 



90 HISTORICAL SETTING 

wholesale judgment upon an unworthy 
world filled men's imaginations. It was, 
indeed, dangerous to freely announce the 
coming disaster, but in cryptic phrase and 
in an apocalyptic imagery that had become, 
evidently, almost stereotyped men spoke 
of the sureness of the coming doom, and 
even tried to read the signs of the times, 
and predict the very day of its coming. 
In Matthew and in the Revelation of John 
we have the language of these warnings. 
The literature must, however, have been 
very extensive, but as it was secret and 
even forbidden literature, it must mostly 
be lost to us. 

It was a demon-haunted world, and much 
of its religion must impress us, as much 
Indian religion to-day impresses even 
thoughtful men, as really devil-worship. 
The half-dethroned gods were everywhere. 
Men were possessed of devils, and mental 
disorders seem to have been frightfully 
common. Exorcism was the function of 
all really potent religious teachers, and 
fear mingled with even the most out- 
spoken skepticism. Even those who tried, 
like the Platonists, to rise to a higher 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 91 

philosophic monotheism found that they 
must make some place for these lower 
agencies. And so arose the neo-platon- 
ists in all their varied forms. Gnosticism 
felt it had the cosmic secret of the uni- 
verse. It taught in many tongues and 
under many forms the one lesson of 
knowledge and enlightenment as the one 
hope of the disrupted world. But its own 
language was the confused mingling of 
Orient and Greece with elements from 
Judaism and Egypt. It had a speculative 
monotheism, and taught under various 
names a mediator and saviour who was to 
come and enlighten men. This mediator 
was "Reason/' and in Jewish Gnosticism 
figures as "'Wisdom/' or, in the Hellenistic 
Gnosticism, as "Sophia/' or the "Logos/' 
Thus men like Philo tried to reinterpret 
the ethical monotheism of Judaism into the 
language of this poetical mixture of religion 
and cosmic speculation. It sought to make 
real to men the fact that God was not the 
author of all man's misery and of the 
world's great darkness. It was an at- 
tempted defense of God against those who 
saw in man's misery an evidence that God 



92 HISTORICAL SETTING 

was evil and not good, was darkness and 
not light. It tried to gather up into itself 
all the wild longings of human hearts 
baffled and perplexed and to still them by 
the promise of deliverance at last through 
mystic entrance into the cosmic process and 
by revelation of its most secret and hidden 
significance. Alas, we know Gnosticism, 
in most part, only from the works of its 
critics and often far from impartial antag- 
onists. Much sounds weird and strange to 
our ears. The world was all mapped 
out, and the circles and spheres of the 
heavens given their mystic meaning. It 
was a "science falsely so called'' the Pauline 
phrase for it seems to say, and it evidently 
had an outer and an inner meaning, which 
permitted intelligence to fill up its phrases 
according to its capacity, but which emptied 
the world of moral values for all too many 
and filled the place with high-sounding 
phrases and with empty words. That it 
was both wide-spread and a dangerous rival 
of the gospel is seen in the letters ascribed 
to Paul and the pastoral Epistles, as well 
as in the fourth Gospel, where John carries 
on a running polemic against it and its 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 93 

attempted seizure of- the gospel and separa- 
tion of it from the historic figure of Jesus 
Christ. 

It was a world full of clamorous voices 
calling to men and women to believe this 
or that, to accept this or that. It was full 
of prophets and teachers and sophists, of 
men and women with sects and enthusi- 
asms, with cosmic theories and wondrous 
revelations. Ignorance jostled with very 
high intelligence, and the total lack of all 
historical background or of any critical 
system left all men to take or leave much 
in accordance with the whim of the mo- 
ment or the loudness of the claimant for a 
hearing. The dialogues of Lucian are full 
of the biting flings of a superficial and 
unsympathetic skepticism, and yet even in 
his pages we see reflected the pathetic 
eagerness of ignorant men and women to 
find some divine voice to which they might 
listen, and some message from the world 
of unseen mystery to give them surcease 
of sorrow. From the unsatisfied longings of 
that age we may turn with something of 
pain to a simpler age of quiet contented 
superstition and obedient religious routine. 



94 HISTORICAL SETTING 

And many longed to go back to such an 
age, but that was impossible forevermore. 

The extravagance, however, of a small 
class in the community was corrupting the 
manners and the morals of all. Men began 
to wonder whether, after all, riches were 
everything. Freedmen were rising to a 
wealth that even the born aristocrats could 
not always boast. There came a longing 
into the hearts of many for "the simple 
life.'' It may have been a rather poetic 
fiction like the Sabine farm of Horace, but 
it was a genuine feeling. And there was a 
definite need to moralize and organize the 
freedman class, which was in danger of 
growing up without traditions or guidance. 
Of great interest to us along this line are 
the efforts made by the popular Cynic- 
Stoic preachers of the time of Jesus to 
carry a popular ethical philosophy to the 
masses of men. Ever since the time of 
Socrates and Diogenes philosophy had had 
some tendency to deal with conduct, not 
on the lofty plane of intellectual analysis 
suitable for the aristocratic circles of Athens 
to which Plato and Aristotle spoke, but on 
the simple plane of vulgar life. The dia- 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 95 

tribe was one outcome of this. In this 
form clever, biting sayings were employed 
to castigate the evils of the day and expose 
the moral miseries of contemporary man- 
ners. This diatribe modified and expanded 
became the homily, or sermon, proclaimed 
by the Cynic popular beggar philosopher, 
who, with rude girdle, barefoot, and all his 
belongings on his back, with staff and 
wallet, traversed the world, teaching, de- 
nouncing, pleading, and laying the founda- 
tions for the sermon which was so soon to 
enter more fully into the lives of men, and 
with a more concrete message. The moral 
teachings of the Cynics, Stoics, and new 
Pythagoreans are essentially the same. In all 
are preached continence, asceticism, purity 
of thought, the simple life, and care for 
the soul. These wandering philosophers 
were accepted as father confessors in time 
of trouble, became spiritual advisers in 
households, comforted the dying; and the 
better known ones, like Seneca, became, in 
a way, house chaplains to the rich and noble. 
The most effective of these teachers 
were preachers and not writers. Musonius 
and Epictetus did not write — they preached; 



96 HISTORICAL SETTING 

and what they preached was religion and 
ethics rather than philosophy in its more 
speculative character. They turned also 
definitely to the rising freedman class with 
moral reproach and moral appeal, and were 
the forerunners of the great Christian 
preachers, like Tertullian and Ambrose, who 
were so soon to turn the world upside down. 
And so much did their preaching resemble 
the Christian message in some of its aspects 
that it was soon confused with it, and on 
into our own day that is often proclaimed 
as Christian ethics which has really been 
drawn from Roman Stoicism rather than 
the New Testament. For instance, when 
Epictetus says, ^'Seek not to have things 
happen as you choose them, but, rather, 
choose them to happen as they do'' (En- 
chiridion), he laid the basis for that 
religious quietism which has more than 
once lamed the active life of the Church. 
And when he and the Cynic-Stoics teach, 
"Death and exile, and all things that appear 
dreadful, let these be every day before 
thine eyes. But death most of all: for so 
thou wilt neither despise nor too greatly 
desire any condition of life,'' we have the 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 97 

essence of the religious morality that still 
curses the Roman Catholic monastery. 
There are, however, many points where the 
Cynic-Stoic popular preaching was in full 
agreement with Christian teaching and pre- 
pared the way for it. Seneca pointed out 
that the birds lived from day to day with 
no family fortune, and taught that we 
should not hate those who did us injury, 
for, after all, God was teaching us through 
man's harsh usage. 

Nor was their teaching agreeable to the 
Roman aristocracy. Twice Roman empe- 
rors banished '^'the Stoic philosophers and 
mathematicians'' — that is, the horoscope 
readers, from Rome (Vespasius in A. D. 74 
and Domitius in A. D. 90), how far be- 
cause there was suspicion of certain indi- 
viduals, and how far because their teaching 
was thought dangerous it is impossible to 
say. But already another force was organ- 
izing and training the freedman class, w^hose 
ears the Stoic teachers were trying to claim. 
Nor was it possible for the Cynic-Stoic 
philosophy to really do more than prepare 
the way. Its teachings were in reality of 
an essentially proud, aristocratic, and 



98 HISTORICAL SETTING 

individualistic type. It was permeated 
throughout with an element of flight from 
the world and scornful self-sufficiency. Its 
religion lacked warmth and assurance, and 
it had seemingly no hope of doing more 
than gaining a few in a perishing world. 
It lacked dynamic character, and remained 
in many lives simply a rather cold and 
unattainable ideal with but little attempt 
to even put its teachings into practice. Like 
John the Baptist, it was the greatest among 
the moral messengers of its passing era, 
but the least in the kingdom of God was 
greater than it. 

We are not to think, however, of all men 
at this time as hungering and thirsting after 
righteousness. The vast mass of men and 
women live in the atmosphere created for 
them, and live in really unrationalized 
content or discontent according to their 
temperament. 

We can see in Roman letters the ordinary 
decent citizen getting up and making his 
offering to the gods much as many rather 
thoughtlessly and mechanically say grace. 
He went on festival occasions and saw the 
rites of this or that priestly service in some 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 99 

temple. He invoked the auguries, swore 
by the gods, had his own favorite super- 
stitions and his own pet doubts, some of 
which he was willing to air on occasion, 
while others he carefully kept to himself. 
Then when sorrow or death flung shadows 
over his life he, perhaps, turned to some 
philosophic teacher, and at times poured 
out his soul in a touching epitaph that 
revealed his longing, his doubt, or his final 
faith. Much of his religious ritual had no 
more actual connection with his daily life 
than it is to be feared some nominal Chris- 
tianity has on the lives of men and women 
among us. Indeed, much of it had really 
lost all ethical significance. It was formal 
and dead, and stood only for a general 
pious regard for the nation and its past. 
In part this was well, for the primitive 
non-morality of the old gods would have 
been shocking immorality had he tried to 
imitate it. So the popular philosophic 
teaching joined with the Jewish synagogue 
in doing away with the vulgar polytheism, 
and making ready the way for the proclama- 
tion of the one God and Father of our 
Lord Jesus Christ. 



100 HISTORICAL SETTING 

Much still remains to be done to make 
clear the work of the Jewish colonies that 
were scattered all over the world. The 
Babylonian exile was evidently not that of 
a whole people. It probably consisted in 
the transference of the leading and danger- 
ous elements to Babylon. But remains 
found on the island of Elephantine, opposite 
Assuan in Egypt, reveal the fact that a 
Jewish colony and a Jewish temple — not 
a mere synagogue — existed there several 
centuries before Christ. And wherever we 
turn we find evidences of a large and 
highly organized Jewish community in 
every great center of trade and life. This 
Jewish organization was at once religious, 
racial, and commercial. It had no navies, 
but controlled, it is evident, much of the 
African corn trade. It had no army, but 
it financed, evidently, many of Rome's 
military adventures. Its religious prej- 
udices were respected, and though the Jews 
were unpopular and often the victims of 
insensate anti-Semitism then as now, its 
force was felt too high up in political 
circles to be ever crushed. In B. C. 139 
the Roman Senate addressed a letter appeal- 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 101 

ing for protection for the Jews to the kings 
of Egypt, Syria, Pergamos, Cappadocia, and 
Parthia, as well as to Sparta, Delos, Samos, 
and many other lesser places. The attempts 
under Tiberius and Claudius to banish them 
from Rome failed, as their numbers and 
power were too great. What their numbers 
were is uncertain. The best guess remains 
only a guess, but there is some reason for 
thinking that they formed at least ten 
per cent of the total population of Egypt, 
that in Syria they w^ere still stronger, and 
in Rome somewhat weaker. They carried 
on an earnest propaganda. Josephus says 
that in Antioch the Jews attracted a great 
number of Greeks to their worship, and 
in a certain sense embodied them in their 
community life. 

There were at this time all degrees of 
Judaism. Just as in our own day we see 
all shades from the utmost religious in- 
difference, through various degrees of "re- 
formed" Jews to the closest and most 
narrow orthodoxy, so the demands of Juda- 
ism varied very much from the simple 
acceptance of the one High God to the 
religious observance of every detail of an 



102 HISTORICAL SETTING 

elaborate ceremonial. Spiritual Judaism in 
the time of Jesus had risen to the realization 
that the essentials of the Jewish religion 
were love to God and to fellow men (Mark 
12. 28); and of their foreign converts they 
demanded varying degrees of conformity 
to the Mosaic law as interpreted by tradi- 
tion. Josephus and Philo are also evi- 
dences of how far devout and racially loyal 
Jews could go in meeting the intellectual 
culture of their age half way. And this 
circumstance results in there being un- 
questionably many who are influenced in 
all shades of degree toward Judaism, and 
these were made ready for the gospel that 
was soon to awaken the world. 

It is important to bear in mind the 
changes that took place without much 
question in Judaism after the destruction 
of Jerusalem, and particularly after the 
final overthrow. Judaism seems either to 
have become narrow and reactionary or 
to have been much lost in the surrounding 
cultures, perhaps also to have in part, at 
least, disappeared in the steadily growing 
Christian sect. At any rate, it is note- 
worthy that the breach between Judaism 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 103 

and Hellenism widened, and that from 
then on Christianity played much the part 
that Judaism at one time seemed destined 
to play as the religion of one God, and a 
judgment seat, of moral life, and inflexible 
divine law, wdth the message of forgiveness 
and life. And between the splendid colors 
of Rome's sunset sky, and the pale soft 
dawning of a new diviner day, was only 
set the shortness of a summer night. 
While with timorous anticipation far-seeing 
prophets watched the inevitable decay of 
faiths without a future, there was speaking 
in the lives of rude, uncultured dreamers 
a more splendid voice, calling men to the 
conquest of greater and more imperial 
provinces than those of Octavius or 
Domitian. 



104 HISTORICAL SETTING 



CHAPTER V 

Christianity and Economics 

CONTENTS 

The military character of barbarism — Christianity and 
work — Christianity and war — The reorganization of 
the world — The early economic organization of the 
Church — The ideals of the freedman class — The effect 
of Christianity upon the freedman class. 

LITERATURE 

For a description of barbarism, see Morgan ''s "An- 
cient Society." For the ethics of the age, see Hall's 
''History of Ethics within Organized Christianity," 
chapters I to IV. E. Troltsch, **Die Soziallehren der 
Christlichen Kirche," 1912, Vol. I. For the rise of the 
freedman class, see especially G. Ferrero, ''The Rise 
and Decline of the Roman Empire," 1907-1909. The 
relation of Christianity to the gospel work has never, 
however, received an adequate treatment. 

Neither savages nor animals seem nat- 
urally lazy. Their activities, however, are 
largely controlled by a few central wants. 
When love, hunger, and thirst are satisfied 
the main incentives to action cease to 
operate. The restless creative idealisms of 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 105 

more highly organized Hfe do not exert 
their steady pressure to further exertion 
upon the savage sated with his feast. The 
rise of private property and the physical 
disabiHty of maternity have exposed women 
to an exploitation that has encouraged in 
the male a contempt for the things he 
could force women to undertake and an 
excessive over-valuation of the things he 
could better accomplish. The vast mass 
of human life has been probably peace- 
fully organized. It is likely quite a mis- 
apprehension to think of savages and 
barbarians as continually at war. At the 
same time success in war, when it did take 
place, gave a military organization a tem- 
porary power of incomparable significance. 
When slavery slowly began to be both 
more humane and more profitable than 
wholesale slaughter of the defeated enemy, 
work was divided into two great categories: 
that fit for women and slaves and that 
which alone was honorable for the free 
fighting male. We are still haunted by 
many of the ghosts of our cave-dwelling 
ancestors, and interwoven with our highest 
religious ideals aje still the rags of military 



106 HISTORICAL SETTING 

barbarism. The groups of Aristotle and 
Plato, of Octavius and Tiberius, were 
aristocratic slave-holding organizations. If 
one substitutes "gentleman" for "phi- 
losopher" in Plato's republic, one realizes 
keenly how exactly some of his most pro- 
nouncedly non-Christian ideals have been 
cherished fondly by whole classes in a 
society that honestly mistook itself for 
Christian. 

Christianity arose at a time when slavery 
was breaking down, and this for the eco- 
nomic reasons we have examined (chapter 
III, page 65). Christianity never set itself 
up against slavery. It is easier to quote 
Stoics than Christians against it until far 
on to the time of Chrysostom. It did, how- 
ever, set itself to combat the ideals born 
of a slave society. Christianity from Second 
Thessalonians on down through a long and 
honorable chapter of its history has been 
the proclaimer of a gospel of industry. 
To work with his own hands was PauFs 
pride, and, of course, Galilaean peasants 
kept no slaves. The stigma that slavery 
always leaves upon honest labor long- 
est attached to household work — "menial 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 107 

tasks" — and not even the gospel of in- 
dustry has as yet removed the prejudice 
against the ''dirty work/' although a 
moment's consideration shows that ''dirt" 
is not the stigma, for what work is more 
honorable and more dirty than a surgeon's ? 
The stigma is slavery casting its shadows 
far on into our own day. The freedman 
class found all the crafts burdened with this 
reproach. Indeed, productive labor of all 
kinds was despised under the slave regime, 
and only the work of "contracting," of 
war, of administration, of pleading in the 
law courts and pretending to do it without 
pay — as was still long pretended afterward 
— of ruling as officials, or managing large 
estates worked by slaves, the management 
of commerce in certain aspects, and engage- 
ment in commercial enterprise by indirec- 
tion, was the work of a "gentleman." 
Even artists were not quite "gentlemen." 
Leisure and extravagance, crowds of slaves, 
and expense in living were the real marks 
of high breeding and station. The pushing 
class loaded itself with debt. One like 
Julius Caesar had to raise a great sum of 
money and then leave Rome to recoup 



108 HISTORICAL SETTING 

himself if he were to keep his station in 
life. 

The freedman class was bound by its 
very function to free itself from this burden 
and stigma. It proclaimed not only the 
honest character of productive work but 
its duty and blessing. It was Christianity 
that came with a religious emphasis upon 
this truth, and what had come into the 
teachings of Christianity from Judaism 
was reenforced by the natural character 
of the freedman class thinking. It may 
well be that, for instance, Mithraism was 
here distinctly inferior to Christianity, for, 
though we know almost nothing of its 
ethical teachings, it was the religion of a 
soldier rather than of a working class, and, 
as one sees in the time of Julian, made its 
appeal to the aristocracy rather than to 
the poor. Whether this be so or not, it 
certainly is true that in the providence of 
God this message of Judaism was made 
vital by Christianity for the great and 
increasing freedman class, whose industrial 
life was to give the world a new basis for 
organization. 

Christianity has thus in its history more 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 109 

than once been in effect an economic 
brotherhood. It was so in the free city 
of the Middle Ages, and this development 
was the direct outcome of the reorganiza- 
tion of the crafts and the craftsman class 
which was early intertwined with primitive 
Christianity. The small cultivator re- 
mained long '^pagan" or a "heathman/' 
and the Roman aristocratic families never 
very heartily embraced Christianity; but 
power had passed from both these classes 
into the hands of those who were now to 
reorganize life on a non-slave basis as an 
industrial society. It is extraordinarily 
difficult to take the ideals and standards of 
life born of one economic stage and re- 
adapt them to the new^ condition of things 
rendered necessary by economic change. 
This was the task of Christianity. It took 
the wandering mobile craftsman class, it 
organized it in "churches"; it gave it a 
government by apostles, bishops, and dea- 
cons; it raised its independence and its 
self-respect by making it support its own 
poor and its own widows and orphans. It 
laid its emphasis upon property as a means 
of influence and power. It gave steadiness 



110 HISTORICAL SETTING 

and soberness to a class subject to strong 
temptations. It separated its prosperity 
from the prosperity of the aristocratic but 
slave-ridden nobles. In the plays of our 
period the freedman is represented as 
making ostentatious attempts to rival aris- 
tocracy, and to force himself by his posses- 
sions upon the exclusive circles. Chris- 
tianity stopped that. It gave the freedman 
a higher interest and a nobler ambition. 
In fact, it did for the class much what the 
early evangelical revival did for the rising 
working class of England, and what Social- 
ism is doing for that class in Germany; it 
kept the ability of the class from being 
helplessly absorbed by the possessing class, 
and it retained that ability for the leader- 
ship of a new organization of society in the 
interests of a wider humanity. Men of 
the stamp of Cyprian, Ambrose, and Au- 
gustine were much more than ecclesiastics; 
they were great administrative leaders of a 
new world-movement. It was not con- 
sciously undertaken. The definite social 
note is almost wholly lacking until Au- 
gustine, but it was doing the thing for 
all that. 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 111 

And one of the most blessed services 
that Christianity ever rendered to the world 
was the spiritualizing and idealizing of 
labor and industry. This it did heartily 
and thoroughly. It tried to even place 
slave labor among the noble and honorable 
things. This was impossible. Slavery had 
to gradually disappear, but one of the very 
things that blinded Christians to the enor- 
mity of all slave exploitation was the fact 
that it tried earnestly to teach men that 
all labor was holy and honorable, and that 
the condition of slavery was not in itself 
any disgrace. 

Christianity, again, carried on no self- 
conscious war with war. Christians be- 
came soldiers, and although later Ter- 
tullian forbade them wearing the triumphal 
crown, yet, on the whole, it only taught 
them to obey more strictly and to fight 
more bravely. At the same time the morals 
of the Christian community made a soldier's 
life a hard one for any of its members, 
and no wonder that the reproach was 
soon raised that Christianity was unpa- 
triotic and forbade men to use arms. The 
injunction, "Resist not evil,'' was, of course. 



112 HISTORICAL SETTING 

never grossly misunderstood in the Orient 
as it has been in the Occident. At the same 
time the principle, which cuts far deeper 
than any literal obedience, was perfectly 
understood and made demands upon temper 
and conduct which the soldier found hard 
to meet. But he tried to meet them, and 
at a peculiarly critical time of the reorgan- 
ization of the world's life two religions 
strove for the Roman army. At first Mithra 
seemed victorious, but at the last Chris- 
tianity conquered, and then wherever the 
soldiers, released from service, settled down 
on the outskirts of the world, they took 
with them their religious faith. From North 
Britain to far-off Asia Minor, along the coast 
of Africa, and all along the line Christian 
colonies began to transfer the economic 
life of the Hellenistic world to great popula- 
tions who needed just such contact and 
training. 

The Christian soldier was followed by 
the Christian merchant and craftsman, and 
one of the great economic services rendered 
by the rapidly developing Christian organ- 
ization was the unifying and healing of a 
vastly disrupted world. Here, again, it 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 113 

was not the only force at work. Roman 
officials were often exceedingly honest and 
zealous in trying to do the same thing. 
But religion had a hearing the conquering 
Roman official could never get. Commerce 
was to be counted as on the same side, but 
only indirectly, and often its effects were 
hatred and jealousy. 

As far as one can judge at this distance 
of time, Roman rule in the provinces was 
like English rule in India; that is, it was 
successful in establishing peace; it was, on 
the whole, just and strong; it was an ad- 
vance on the petty tyrannies and disorder 
which it superseded, but remained un- 
popular, and this for good reasons. It was 
haughty, often intensely ignorant of local 
conditions; it was, after all is said, a means 
of exploitation in the interests of a ruling 
class, and did as does England in India — 
— ^it divided that it might rule. At this 
point the young Christian Church began 
her economic service to the world. She 
reached down into the divisions of nation- 
ality and locality, and economically unified 
the world in what proved a wonderful way. 
East and West ultimately parted, but the 



114 HISTORICAL SETTING 

use of Latin in all the churches of the 
Roman communion until this day is only 
one sign of a work of unification which was 
economic as well as religious. As then the 
Roman rule waned in political and military 
effectiveness, a freedman class, organized, 
trained in industry, unified in speech in a 
great degree, with a cosmopolitan con- 
sciousness born of world-wide missionary 
movements, was ready to take over the 
huge responsibility of transferring the cul- 
ture of the few to the masses of the world. 
The early organization of the Church 
seems to have been both informal and 
democratic; that is to say, all had direct 
voice in the conduct of its affairs. Around 
about, however, were various types of caste 
systems, and as the young Church was 
compelled to more closely organize, two 
forms were prominently thrust upon them. 
The Jewish synagogue presented a type of 
what may be called patriarchal democ- 
racy, and the provincial governments a 
type of municipal hierarchy. As the cities 
were the centers of Christian activity, the 
city ecclesiastical officials naturally became 
the bishops and leaders for the poorer and 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 115 

more ignorant countrysides. Moreover, the 
fact that the tradesman freedman class 
exercised so great an influence gave the 
city community a distinct predominance in 
the councils of the early Church. The 
monastery and hermit had not yet appeared. 
They offset this somewhat apparently later 
on. But in the beginning a closely organ- 
ized episcopal municipal structure was only 
natural. And this ruling organization was 
open to all male members. Even slaves 
could rise to the highest places, and so 
society was democratized. Even later on 
in Church history, after the hierarchy had 
become thoroughly aristocratic, the career 
of the priest was an open door for the 
poorer classes to the highest influence in the 
political world. Thus birth was no longer 
the sole claim for recognition, and though 
neither birth nor wealth was any dis- 
advantage, and were often greatly over- 
estimated — as was natural — ^yet the effect 
upon the new society must have been 
exceedingly great. And although never com- 
plete the process of democratization of the 
caste system, in which the world had gotten 
mired, received its first great impetus. When 



116 HISTORICAL SETTING 

one sees how powerless Buddhism has been 
to greatly affect the caste system of India, 
one is grateful that Christianity was, at 
least, one important factor in the destruction 
of it in Europe to the extent that it has 
been destroyed. 

It is not fair to judge the ideals of the 
freedman class from the sneers and flouts 
of the paid literary parasites who have 
done so much to distort our notions of 
the time of the Caesars. Yet it remains 
probably true that the one thing that 
seemed to the class needful was money. 
The vulgarity of our own commercial age 
has the same roots as the vulgarity at 
which literary refinement sneered. Wealth 
took the place of birth as a way to power, 
and then bought the privileges of birth by 
buying the penurious daughters of noble 
families, and by imitation of the wild extrav- 
agance of the ruling class. A Christian 
Puritanism struck effective blows at these 
false ideals, and wealth was indeed sought, 
but under limitations of humanity and 
honesty, and was used as Marcion used his 
wealth, for the promotion of the Church 
and the extension of the Christian power. 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 117 

Nothing but a powerful religious impulse 
ever seems able to go deep enough into life 
to change in any really fundamental way 
the ideals of humanity. And to this most 
powerful religious appeal the freedman class, 
and those who joined with it in reorganizing 
life, gave heed. The ideals soon suffered 
corruption, but they never sank to the level 
of the Roman Colosseum or the Hellenic 
theater; they never permitted the inhuman- 
ity of the slave-driven latifundia estates, 
where four years was almost the limit of 
human endurance. They never wholly lost 
respect for honest labor, or wholly sur- 
rendered to the low ideals of the marriage 
relationship prevalent in the aristocratic 
circles of the ruling class. The Church 
always protested against the worship of 
money, and even if her later protests in 
the vows of poverty of monastic orders 
remained often ineffective, they never w^ere 
wholly so. Before the eyes of the new" 
world vvere set the teachings of Jesus in 
their incomparable simplicity and divine 
beauty, and if society as a whole never rose 
to their level, there were always earnest 
and insistent souls whose real desire w^as 



118 HISTORICAL SETTING 

to embody those teachings in their conduct, 
and so the ideals were held aloft from day 
to day and week by week to the purging 
and renewing of the Kfe debased and de- 
graded by slavery, oppression, and violence, 
as well as by greed, ambition, and com- 
petitive struggle. 

This last element was no small feature 
in the social demoralization of that day. 
As long as classes are fairly fixed the 
competitive struggle may go on within the 
class, but it always has its limits. As 
the freedman class began to accumulate 
wealth and power the competition for the 
world's honors and high places began to 
be world-wide and open to all. The 
desperate character of this struggle is seen 
in the internal history of the court at Rome. 
Intrigue, murder, poisoning, violence, base 
surrender of manhood and womanhood 
were often the price men and women paid 
for position and social power. All too 
often the glittering honors of the world 
were paid for by nameless and terrible 
dishonor. 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 119 



CHAPTER VI 

Christianity and Politics 

CONTENTS 

The political helplessness of the early Church — The ac- 
commodation of the Church to the times — ^The effect 
of persecution upon the Church — The rise of a sacra- 
mental organization — The struggle and weakness of 
this early organization — The place and meaning of the 
creed — The political hope inherited from Judaism — 
The city and its tradition in Asia Minor — ^The politi- 
cal significance of the city in Asia Minor. 

LITERATURE 

Besides the books given under chapter I, consult 
Augustus Neander, **Geschichte der Pflanzung und Lei- 
tung der Kirche durch die Apostel," 5th edition (Ger- 
man and English translation). F. C. Baur, "Das Chris- 
tentum und die Christliche Kirche der drei ersten Jahr- 
hunderten," 1853 (German and English translation). A. 
Harnack, '*Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte" (German 
and English translation), 1890. The article in the En- 
cyclopaedia Britannica "Christianity," by George W. 
Knox. A. C. McGiffert, "The Apostles' Creed.'* 
O. Pfleiderer, "Das Urchristentum," 2d edition, 1902. 
W. M. Ramsay, "Historical Geography of Asia Minor,'* 
1890. 



120 HISTORICAL SETTING 

In the very early apostolic Church the 
coming of Jesus was eagerly awaited, and 
at first it was hoped that even before the 
first generation had passed that coming 
might be experienced. But we see in the 
New Testament how as that expectation 
grew weaker and the growing Church began 
to turn to the actual life whose ways were 
known, the teachers of the Church taught 
the lesson of life's duties gladly taken up. 
For the most part, political duties had no 
great place in that early organization. The 
mass of men belonging to outcast Chris- 
tianity had no more influence upon politics 
than a Russian peasant has to-day. Here 
and there an office-holder might belong to 
the Church. Now and then one of Caesar's 
household might take a secret interest in 
the little struggling Jewish sect; but any 
political ambition must have seemed to the 
Apostolic Church possible only under the 
forms of Messianic catastrophe. So we 
see in the Revelations the Jewish forms of 
thought taken over to express the Christian 
political hope. It would have been dan- 
gerous to say out loud the things of the 
Roman empire there boldly foreshadowed 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 121 

had the Apocalyptic language been known 
to Roman officials; but they were as 
ignorant of the seditious hopes as England 
was before the Indian Mutiny of the current 
seditious gossip of the bazaars. Thus very 
early political ambitions under the Jewish 
Apocalyptic forms received sanction from 
the Church, and as the hope of a speedy 
coming seemed to wane, as the first apostles 
began to die, and their places were filled 
by men who had not known Jesus, the 
political hope had to gain another character 
to survive at all. 

We have incidentally noticed the fact 
that in the early literature the gospel 
message is mainly concerned with the mes- 
sage of redemption for the individual in 
the ecclesiastical group. Hardly anyone 
looked out, before Augustine, for a possible 
redemption of the social organization. It 
is true that for Tertullian the Roman world 
seemed eternal. It was, at least, to last 
until the end of the age; yet even he seems 
content to have it remain politically an 
incarnation of pagan life and thought, and 
the Church was to be a Puritan body 
within society seeking the redemption only 



122 HISTORICAL SETTING 

of the members of the ecclesiastical 
group. 

As the Jewish influence and Apocalyptic 
vision waned, in consequence of the fall 
of Jerusalem, we see the Christian Church 
quite definitely accommodate herself under 
men like Cyprian and Ambrose to the 
existing political condition. The political 
hope of the synagogue was well-nigh gone, 
and the political intrigues of the Diaspora 
were now thoroughly discredited. Yet, 
for all that, the organization was already 
making itself ready for political action. The 
shifting of the center of the Church from 
Jerusalem to Antioch, and from thence to 
the western coast of Asia Minor, and from 
there to Rome is one of the difficult chapters 
in Church history. But the facts stare us 
in the face and the reasons are not far to 
guess. Rome was the real center of the 
world, and as headquarters of the prop- 
aganda it was soon the headquarters of the 
Church. Whether Peter was ever in Rome 
or not no one knows. The continuity of 
the tradition weighs but little in the face 
of the temptation to find Peter there. But 
Paul was certainly there. The criticism 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 123 

that seeks to discredit Acts and Paul's 
letters is sensational hypercriticism and 
will "go the way/' The sure instinct of 
the early leader chose Rome for the central 
home of the young informally organized 
Church, and the political instinct, which 
is not so much a matter of race as of tra- 
dition, was inherited by the early leaders. 
Already in the time of Nero the Church 
was strong enough to come under the 
suspicion of having something to do with 
the burning of Rome. Nero, at least, was 
glad to seize the occasion for trying to 
escape the odium that easily fell to his 
share. How far he was implicated no one 
knows. Perhaps infatuated sycophants took 
his half-expressed wishes for orders. The 
great ones of the earth do not always need 
to commit themselves in having their dirty 
work done for them. Perhaps the Apoc- 
alyptic language of Christianity was inter- 
preted to the court and its threats made 
the occasion for the persecution. It is even 
barely possible, though highly improbable, 
that misguided Christians did actually seek 
to realize the vision of fiery judgment. 
There seems little doubt that the fire was 



124 HISTORICAL SETTING 

the result of conspiracy on the part of 
some organized group. But the great prob- 
abihty is that Nero was the inciter to the 
catastrophe. 

Persecution did not drive the Church 
into politics in one sense of the word, but 
it drove it into close inter-provincial organ- 
ization. Persecution was sporadic. When 
it broke out at one place the persecuted 
members found a home elsewhere. This 
led to close association and to political 
life within the organization. It became a 
training ground for really great organizers 
and great ecclesiastical political leaders. 
The sacramental Church became a quasi- 
secret society with some of the moral 
dangers that attended that kind of organ- 
ization. Only the fully initiated could 
partake of the sacrament of the Lord's 
Supper, and they were, therefore, under 
solemn vows whose significance was the 
eternity of everlasting happiness or ever- 
lasting pain. As this organization spread 
over the world it became a political menace 
by its unity, its refusal to take part in the 
worship of the emperor, and its resolute 
attitude of strict obedience to its own bishops 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 125 

and officers. This was, of course, recog- 
nized by even tolerant Rome. Persecution 
followed after persecution; but, like nearly 
all persecutions, it only sifted out the ir- 
resolute and made those left the stronger 
and more fanatical. We also soon find evi- 
dences that individual Christians, at least, 
followed the example set them and tampered 
with the officials. There are other ways of 
yielding political power than by casting 
ballots, and as the organization grew 
stronger and stronger a distinct political 
ambition was bound to appear. 

The means to this end could only be 
by alliance with the strong military central 
authority. Even when the consummation 
came the Christian minority would have 
been too weak to wield the power alone. 
It was only strong enough to enter into 
an alliance with Constantine. Yet long be- 
fore that time individual communities had 
felt the power of the sacramental Church, 
organized now most carefully with bishops 
and elders and deacons and lesser officers, 
who watched over the whole life of the 
churchly organization and guarded its 
interests. 



126 HISTORICAL SETTING 

We must neither idealize the early Church 
after the fashion of an unhistorical High 
Churchism, nor yet are we to underrate 
the elements of great primitive moral 
strength in a Church which, in spite of 
all the weaknesses brought into it by the 
untrained and often denationalized and de- 
moralized elements of the empire's under- 
world, transformed the ideals of the com- 
munity and left its stamp upon life far be- 
yond the bounds of its official power. 

This power in early days was very great. 
The ban of excommunication could not, 
of course, be enforced by governmental 
authority; but the initiated Christian had 
cut himself off from all other organized 
social life, and without membership in 
some organization the obscure member of 
society, unless very rich, was very helpless. 
The ban exposed him to all manner of 
deprivations. The result was that the 
temptation to form sects within which those 
under the ban could enjoy the social strength 
of organization was very great, and so 
with corresponding vigor the Church laid 
her emphasis upon the sin of heresy and 
schism. All the early Christian literature. 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 127 

from Galatians and the pastoral epistles 
down through the Teachings of the Twelve 
Apostles and the works of Ambrose and 
C}^rian, laid great stress upon the unity 
of the Church. And very soon the unity 
sought had this internal political motive. 
A Marcion was strong enough for a little 
to break loose from the mother Church and 
found a sect, but the Church soon began 
to point out the necessity of a true sacra- 
ment and to claim the sole authority to 
administer the true sacrament. To be 
without the pale was soon represented as 
being without any chance for the salvation 
which was now linked with the sacrament, 
and so the political unity gathered about 
baptism and the Lord's Supper, 

It is a great mistake to over-estimate the 
intellectual interest in the early doctrinal 
statements. The leaders w^ere not so much 
seeking formulae that would express the 
experimental life, as finding authoritative 
phrases that would guard the true Church 
from sectarian intrusion, and hedge about 
the sacrament from the profane and 
schismatic. Thus one important factor in 
the formulation of orthodoxy was the in- 



128 HISTORICAL SETTING 

ternal political situation, and the early 
creeds were polemic and exclusive rather 
than attempts to unite and conciliate. This 
seems particularly true of the Western 
Church, which, true to Roman tradition, 
inherited rather a political than an intel- 
lectual character. But even in the Eastern 
Church the struggle was rather for formulae 
that insured ecclesiastical unity than to find 
truth. The authority of Scripture was hard 
to appeal to because the allegorical method 
of interpretation, justified by long misuse, 
enabled anybody to prove almost anything, 
so that at last tradition was forced into 
the foreground and another motive for 
guarding the purity of the Church as the 
maintainer of tradition was added. So that 
the inner life of the Church became a 
training ground for political activity far 
more potent than the Roman Senate, and 
the political life of the civic centers, which 
had suffered much through Rome's central- 
ization of power, was gradually transferred 
to the Church, which became the heir to 
all that the municipalities had gained of 
political experience and social sagacity. 
From Judaism also the Church evidently 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 129 

inherited not only a political hope but some 
political tradition. The Jews were never a 
negligible quantity in measuring the forces 
of the empire, and the special privileges 
which they bought or wrung from Rome 
reveal the power they quietly, persistently, 
and doggedly used. Eusebius tells of wars 
carried on by the Jews against the Greeks 
in Cyrene, Alexandria, and Egypt generally, 
and evidently knows other authority than 
Dion Cassius for his statements. The 
losses on both sides are said to have run 
up into the thousands, and Trajan had to 
send one of his best and most favorite 
generals with foot, cavalry, and a naval 
force to carry on a war against them which 
lasted a long time. It also led to clearing 
the province of Mesopotamia of them, in 
which again a great multitude were said to 
have been slain. All this shows how highly 
organized Judaism was, and to this organ- 
ization the Christian Church undoubtedly 
became heir, for it is evident from the 
apologists that the bitter feeling against the 
Jews on the part of Christians, and of 
Christians against the Jews, was not by 
any means universal, and that far on into 



130 HISTORICAL SETTING 

the third and fourth century Jews became 
Christians often in considerable numbers. 
Close organization was necessary for self- 
protection, and soon officials did not know 
whether or not they had in their following 
those who belonged to the new sect. Each 
returning persecution called attention to the 
need of political power, and it is only 
natural that the Church longed for a final 
victory over the Roman state, and the time 
when their numbers would be so great that 
the political power should yield. Already 
in the time of Trajan Pliny the younger 
asserts that the temples were deserted and 
there was no market for the fodder of 
sacrificial victims. It was, therefore, no 
wild hope that the organization might be- 
come a political might, for a state without 
a religion was almost un thought of; and 
Christians began to insist ever more stren- 
uously upon its sole claim and its exclusive 
character. Throughout the literature of 
the second century is a note of sure and 
speedy triumph, and all triumph was more 
or less linked with some political expression. 
Thus it is not too much to say that 
from every side the early Christian Church 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 131 

was driven into political action: the Mes- 
sianic tradition, the Jewish inheritance of 
political power, the tradition of the city 
in Asia Minor, and the general acceptance 
on the part of all as a general truth that 
religion was a state matter, and that it 
was the state's duty to protect true religion 
and repress the false. Even the early 
Christians did not complain of the state's 
persecution of false religions, but only of 
not seeing that Christianity was true. Any- 
thing like our doctrine of conscious tolera- 
tion of various religions was foreign alike 
to Judaism, paganism, and Christianity. 
Just how soon the early Christian Church 
was sufficiently organized to in any way 
effectively interfere in political action it is 
impossible to say. It must be remem- 
bered that political pressure was not ex- 
ercised as it is to-day; it was by organ- 
ized public opinion, whose last resort was 
public riot and disturbance. That Chris- 
tianity soon took part in such disturbances 
is seen early in its history in North Africa, 
and later on the monks and hermits were 
exceedingly turbulent elements in the com- 
munal life of the young Eastern Church. 



132 HISTORICAL SETTING 

Thus we look out at a world that it is 
hard for us now to understand, and we 
constantly attribute to the early Church 
both virtues and vices which were not 
existent, because the point of view was so 
entirely diflFerent from our own. 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 133 

CHAPTER VII 

The Church in the House 

CONTENTS 

Paul's churches and their meeting places — Pliny and his 
description of Christians to Trajan — The Church and 
exorcism — The Church and hospitality — The question 
of church buildings — The method of propaganda — 
The central message — The Old and New Testaments 
as foundation for a new culture. 

LITERATURE 

The commentaries of Lightfoot on Paul's Letters are 
still most valuable. Consult also G. A. Deissmann, 
"Paulus," 1910. On hospitality, see especially the 
chapter in A. Harnack's "Mission und Ausbreitung der 
Christlichen Kirche." For exorcism, consult the articles 
in Smith's "Dictionary of Christian Antiquities," and in 
Herzog's "Realencyclopedia" (German with English 
edition). See also the Church Histories of W. Moller, 
"Kirchengeschichte," 2d edition, 1902 (German and 
English translation), and of K. Miiller, 1892. 

The little bands of Christians so soon 
organized into churches met at first and 
for many years at the houses of the wealthier 
or more important members. Twice Paul 
greets his converts in the name of Aquila 



134 HISTORICAL JETTING 

and Priscilla and "the church which is 
at their house." The Orient is changing, 
but one can still see towns and villages that 
substantially reproduce the conditions of 
life that then prevailed. We see the nar- 
row, ill-kept streets; the houses huddled 
rather irregularly together, both for security 
and for shade. Awnings cover the door- 
way at which Paul works at the simple 
loom on which the famous tentcloth is 
woven for which Tarsus was renowned. 
The house is low, but has an upper story 
in which there are no partitions, so that a 
goodly number can squat, crowded together 
as only Orientals can crowd together; and 
in the corner sits the presiding elder, or 
apostle. The ojQScers of the little fellowship 
are quite numerous, but some of the many 
names really denote the same office or duty, 
only the local designation differs. There 
are apostles, elders, bishops, deacons, dea- 
conesses, prophets, teachers, exorcists, and 
keepers of the door. The local organization 
follows the outline of either the synagogue 
or perhaps some guild fellowship, or some 
mystery cult, or the organization of the 
political community in which the Church 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 135 

takes its rise. Slowly the type of the 
synagogue gives way to a more central 
organization, and the separation between 
the Church and the synagogue becomes 
ever more complete- 

The meetings are at all hours — early in 
the morning, when alone slaves and serv- 
ants are free; and, again, late at night, 
when at last even the ceaselessly industrious 
Oriental stops working and pauses to chat 
and argue. We may well imagine the 
impression the little Church made upon 
Pliny before he sent his celebrated letter 
to Trajan. With the interest in personal 
observation which caused the death of his 
uncle during the outburst of Vesuvius, we 
can imagine him finding out that some 
slave of his was one of these denounced 
Christians. We may see him sending for 
his slave. He was personally a kindly 
and just man. His assurances to his slave 
might easily gain the slave's confidence, 
and Pliny, perhaps, himself arranged to 
visit a meeting of the Christian fellowship. 
He flings a mantle over his Roman garb, 
and steals with his slave to the meeting 
place where an "apostle'' is to preach. 



136 HISTORICAL SETTING 

The doorkeepers are aware that a high- 
bom Roman is coming, but that he has 
promised that no harm shall come of his 
visit, and perhaps good. One may see 
the haughty cultured Roman patrician, who 
even in his disguise is patently of the power- 
possessing class. In spite of James's in- 
junction and the feeling of class jealousy, 
way is made for him, and the best place 
the humble room affords is his. The meet- 
ing begins with prayer, and then the wailing 
chant, borrowed from the synagogue, is 
joined in by all. Some one reads a message 
of encouragement from a venerated leader. 
Another recites a prophecy from the Old 
Testament. Then the * 'apostle'' begins his 
homily and the coming new aeon is his 
theme. They are warned as Paul does in 
Romans to obedience to the powers that 
be; but one reason for patience and obedi- 
ence is the fact that these are all passing 
away. The Messias is coming in power 
and glory. The poor will be made rich, 
the rich and mighty but unbelieving will 
be cast down. Justice, mercy, peace, and 
plenty will be the portion of the poor and 
the oppressed. In the meantime all are to 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 137 

live in love, in truth, in chastity, and 
honesty. They are to work with their 
hands. Labor is no disgrace; the Lord 
Christ became a house-builder, and Paul 
a tentcloth weaver. The cross, the atoning 
sacrifice, the resurrection of the God-Man 
are lifted up, and baptism is explained and 
proclaimed. 

The proud Roman is half amused and 
half bored. He looks about upon the 
motley gathering of slaves, freedmen, work- 
ing-men, longshoremen; here and there a 
Jew or an Arab; women who mingle in 
unwonted freedom with the rest are acting 
as deaconesses and report cases of hard- 
ship and suffering. Then the hour for 
work draws nigh and the bread and wine 
for the morning meal are produced. This 
love feast is preceded by the sacramental 
eating and drinking of special portions set 
aside. A hymn is again chanted in the 
wailing monotone of the East, a prayer 
and benediction by the oldest disciple fol- 
lows, and not all together, but by twos 
and threes the company steals away. And 
Pliny smiles at it all. They teach no 
better and no worse than the vulgar but 



138 HISTORICAL SETTING 

often hypocritical and objectionable Cynics, 
and as for their gathering being a danger 
to the Roman empire it is simply absurd. 
So he writes to Trajan his general im- 
pression, and Trajan writes back that 
though the Christians are not to be sought 
after, they are, nevertheless, a forbidden 
fellowship, and when actually proved stub- 
born and unrepentant are to be punished. 

In the meantime the Church at the 
house harbors the "'apostle," who, of course, 
is not one of the twelve, but a wandering 
teacher who has once seen the Lord. He 
tells the inside circle of his many adven- 
tures, and finds out how the cause is pro- 
gressing. If the church is well to do, he 
gathers a collection for a poorer congrega- 
tion; and all day he wanders from bazaar 
to bazaar finding his fellow Christians, 
speaking a word to them, hearing of diffi- 
culties and disputes, and resolving questions 
of loyalty and orthodoxy. At night he 
meets all the elders at the home of the 
presiding elder or bishop, who administers 
the affairs of the local church and keeps it 
in touch with all the churches round about. 
Measures are discussed for spreading the 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 139 

"good news." The signs of the times are 
eagerly discussed. The tragic end of Nero, 
the murder of Servius Galba, the violence 
of the brief reigns of Otho and Vitellius, 
and the horrors of the civil wars all en- 
courage them to believe that indeed the 
last times are at hand; and the lull that 
followed under Vespasian, to be succeeded 
by the awful fall of Jerusalem, and the 
rise to the throne of Jerusalem's conqueror 
are all things that speak of the coming 
triumph and the revealed glory of the 
crucified and risen Master. For the earliest 
hopes of the Church at the house were, 
indeed, of heaven and personal salvation, 
but also of the triumph here on earth of 
Him whose defeat on the cross was but 
the passing prelude to the resurrection and 
final coming in triumphant glory. 

But it was not only argument that spread 
the good tidings. It was a demon-haunted 
world, and men and women were "pos- 
sessed." Luke and the early Christian 
literature do not make sharp distinctions 
between lunacy and possession. All the 
primitive Church knew was the actual fact, 
which remains a fact to-day in pagan 



140 HISTORICAL SETTING 

Korea or in Christian America, that the 
Christian message brought deliverance, and 
men who were ""possessed" of evil passions 
and wicked spirits became clean and sane 
and wholesome. Diseases were healed, 
wonders were wrought. We may explain 
as we please, and discount both the narra- 
tives of the primitive Churches — and with- 
out question much was uncritical and per- 
haps exaggerated — and discount also the 
phenomena themselves; but of one thing we 
may be sure, which is that the faith of the 
Church was built upon these ""wonders and 
signs,'' and that the moral healing was 
then, as it is to-day, the most marked and 
most permanent witness to the power of 
the good tidings. So the church in the 
house had its exorcists and healers, who 
prayed and taught and rescued men and 
women from despair and sin and delusions, 
and, freeing them from bondage, gave them 
the liberty of the sons of God. 

So the church in the house was full of 
joy and peace and happiness. ""Rejoice 
evermore'' was one of Paul's admonitions, 
which he no doubt repeated many times. 
The joy of Jesus Christ, which made men 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 141 

call him a winebibber and a friend of 
publicans and sinners, was the joy of the 
early Church. They had dark moments. 
The struggle with ugly passions marked 
even Paul's church at Corinth; strife and 
theological dispute distracted the little com- 
munity from its real business, yet, on the 
whole, we see a new movement full of 
triumph, of joy, of enthusiasm for holiness, 
chastity, and the loving life. We see a freed- 
man class learning a real freedom, and being 
trained by moral activity for the reorgan- 
ization of the world. 

The church in the house was the center 
of an organized hospitality. The prophet, 
teacher, healer, apostle, or plain Christian 
craftsman knew where he could ask almost 
as a right for hospitality as he wandered 
about the world. This hospitality was 
abused, but even abuse could not suppress 
it; and from sea to sea, and from north 
to south there journeyed from the church 
at the house of Nymphas to the church at 
the house of Cynthia or Aquila and Priscilla 
a stream of wandering Christian craftsmen 
with a new life and new enthusiasm and a 
new and inspiring hope. 



142 HISTORICAL SETTING 

When the church in the house began to 
give place to buildings set apart for assem- 
bly and worship it is hard to say. After 
Trajan's edict the religion was formally a 
forbidden religion, and although Christians 
were not to be hunted for, nor was the 
evidence of informers or anonymous persons 
to be taken, yet no such public demonstra- 
tion as a building owned by the fellowship 
could have been at first tolerated. Yet long 
before Diocletian church buildings stood 
in the name of Christianity, which were 
then destroyed during the last fierce at- 
tempt to put Christianity down. From 
Trajan to Diocletian the persecutions were 
sporadic and local, but often exceedingly 
severe, and sometimes very wide-spread. 
For such times there existed secret places 
where the fellowship met by arrangement, 
and the catacombs, in some instances, 
sheltered them. The ancient city was also 
supplied with shops and meeting places 
where such gatherings could be held; and 
yet from hints dropped it may be assumed 
that far down the age after Christ the church 
in the house of this or that well-known 
Christian played a still important role. 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 143 

Nor must we suppose that even in times 
of peace, when no persecution threatened, 
the meetings were open as with us. Only 
those fully initiated could even witness 
the sacramental meal, and even to the 
assembly some sort of an introduction was' 
needed. The propaganda was not, ap- 
parently, even mainly carried on by such 
seasons of worship. In public places 
apostles and teachers preached and spoke, 
and then sought out their audience and 
their opportunity. Working men spoke to 
their fellow craftsmen, and when confidence 
had been gained, and perhaps not until 
then, was an invitation extended to join 
the assembly under the protection of the 
fellow workman, who is trying now to 
convert the visitor to the new faith. This 
hand-to-hand work was going on all over 
the empire. It might perhaps be a servant 
who was laboring with a fellow servant, or 
even with a master or mistress. 

It is not well to idealize the gospel as 
it was then preached. The moral and 
spiritual level of PauFs letters could not be 
maintained. So the Christian literature 
shows signs of very speedy degeneracy. 



144 HISTORICAL SETTING 

Superstition mingled with the worship. 
Lower motives led men into the Christian 
communion than the love for God as 
seen in Jesus Christ. The writings of the 
third generation show already sad mis- 
apprehension of the real lesson of Christ's 
life, death, and resurrection. Crass heresy 
of one kind or another gained entrance 
and degraded the conception of God. 
Baptism and the sacrament began to be 
used as an external and unethical magic. 
Even in Acts and Paul's letters we see how 
densely ignorant and unspiritual was often 
the early little Church. How could it be 
otherwise ? 

On the other hand, no more effective 
educational agency was at work than the 
church in the house. It was a book religion. 
More than once the authorities tried to 
destroy the Christian books, for they recog- 
nized how the Church was organized on a 
literature. To understand that literature 
was an education. To-day the English 
version of those books has made ignorant 
men cultured leaders of English life. The 
church in the house was a school as well 
as an assembly; and the letters of the 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 145 

leaders were passed from hand to hand 
and from church to church. The under- 
standing of the Old Testament meant a 
growing intelHgence and a widening ho- 
rizon. The Greek version was, naturally, 
the one known and used, and in spite of 
the growing fear and dislike of the Jews 
the Church held fast to the Scriptures of the 
Old Testament and gave us our priceless 
heritage. 

To it were added gradually the letters 
of the great leaders; Paul's letters, letters 
perhaps by his followers, who report their 
understanding of his preaching (Hebrews); 
letters dictated, it may be, in part by him 
with greetings added by his scribe (Romans 
16 written by Tertius); letters that, being 
sent by "John,'' were circulated without 
men knowing surely, even into our own 
critical day, whether this was the old 
apostle or a presbyter of the same name 
and high reputation. Some letters were 
regarded as doubtful as late as Eusebius 
(A. D. 324), like Second Peter, but were 
included at last. It is wonderful how 
great a gap separates the canon thus slowly 
chosen from the literature that comes im- 



146 HISTORICAL SETTING 

mediately after. There are books outside 
the Old Testament canon one might wish 
included, like Ecclesiasticus, but there is 
actually no early Christian book coming 
in any sense near to the canonical literature, 
or that could be mistaken for one of the 
original documents. James's letter was 
unjustly judged, on the whole, by Luther, 
although from his point of view it was not 
^^evangelical,'' and the ^'Revelation" has 
so much that is Jewish and hard to under- 
stand that many — again including Luther 
— ^have doubted its value in the canon; 
but who now would wish to take either 
one out.^ That literature alone lifted the 
whole cultural level of the church in the 
house and gave it an historical significance 
greater than the portico of Athens, or the 
schools of Rome. 

The original synagogue was a school of 
sacred letters, and now the church in the 
house took over on a still broader basis 
the task of teaching an ignorant class out 
of as fine a literature as the world has pre- 
served to us. Later on, as in Augustine 
and the scholastics of the Middle Ages, the 
culture of the Hellenistic world was in 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 147 

large part added. But in the earlier stages, 
and for many even on into later times, 
the Scriptures of the Old and New Testa- 
ments remained the source of any culture 
they possessed and the guardian of the 
religion and conduct of the Christianized 
many. 



148 HISTORICAL SETTING 



CHAPTER VIII 

The Changing Gospel Hope 

CONTENTS 

The inclusive character of the Roman imperialism — The 
powers still left to organizations within the empire — 
The rising power and importance of the Christian 
organization — Reasons for this — The formation of an 
ecclesiastical machine — The rise of creed and dogma 
— The gradual change in the message of the Church — 
The variety of needs the gospel met — The rise of 
schisms and factions — The gradual rise of an im- 
perial emphasis — The success of Roman Catholicism 
and its weakness. 

LITERATURE 

The inclusive character of the Roman empire is 
brought out by Ernest Renan, "Marc-Aurele et la fin du 
Monde antique." Consult also R. von Jhering, "Der 
Geist des romischen Rechts," 1891. On the rise of the 
Church, see Gibbon's famous one-sided chapter in his 
"Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." For the rise 
of schisms, see A. Hilgenfeld, "Ketzergeschichte des 
Urchristentums," 1884. For the rise of the papacy, A. 
Ritschl's "Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche, 2d 
edition, 1857. 

It is not easy for us to understand an 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 149 

organization of society in which such great 
powers were intrusted to little governments 
within the great government as in the 
Roman empire. The father of a family 
had the power of life and death over 
his "family/' including the slaves and minor 
children under that term. Gradually the 
children were excepted, because the mother 
belonged to another "gens/' and so im- 
parted to her children the quasi freedom 
of another "gens.'' Then, under Stoic 
influence and the rising tide of humanity, 
slaves began to enjoy some measure of 
protection by public opinion from out- 
rageous cruelty. In the same way other 
groups besides the family group possessed 
great powers of discipline. The synagogue 
even had for certain purposes and in some 
places the power of life and death left to 
it over its own members. In Jerusalem, 
at the trial of Jesus, Pilate bids the Jewish 
leaders judge the accused "according to 
their own law," but they disclaim the 
power of life and death, although in Acts 
Stephen is reported as having been stoned 
as the result of legal process before the 
chief priest, with witnesses "consenting unto 



150 HISTORICAL SETTING 

his death/' among whom were those who, 
Hke Paul, cannot have been merely part of 
a mob. So also various guilds, associations, 
and religious cults seem to have exercised 
exceedingly wide powers over the lives and 
conduct of the members. No doubt this 
was often only by tacit consent. There 
was always in the background an appeal 
to a more political type of court; but 
custom is often much stronger than law, 
and the tyranny of a quasi-voluntary group 
may be far more searching and effective 
in its violence and constraint than the 
tyranny of men set over the group, but not 
of it. So we find early in the history of 
the little Christian community a group 
discipline gradually being established. The 
story of the Apostle Peter and Ananias 
and Sapphira reveals the ^ 'great fear" that 
came upon all the Church when any act 
of patent disloyalty to the group exposed 
a member to the censure of the society. 

It is at this point also that indirectly 
persecution strengthens a group life. The 
Christian Church soon discovered and de- 
veloped the ''ban." Paul called for its 
exercise in the case of the church at Corinth, 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 151 

and, apparently, with almost immediate 
results. Of course the fear of the loss of 
the soul must ever be a tremendous instru- 
ment of power in the hands of those who 
claim the power to decide the destiny of 
the soul. To-day we are so far Protestant 
that few feel that actually any man has 
this power. But in Roman Catholic com- 
munities it is still strangely effective even 
in the case of highly intelligent men and 
women. Yet this alone would not have 
made the ''ban" effective in many cases had 
there not been other considerations. A 
persecuted group cuts off its membership 
from social contacts outside its own circle. 
The social-democratic working man in 
Germany in the old days was wholly de- 
pendent upon his social-democratic fellows 
for the companionship and contacts which 
really constitute life. The foundations 
were then laid for the iron discipline which 
has made the party the strongest single 
party in Germany. Much the same thing 
was happening in the young Christian 
Church. There also persecution knit the 
community together, and anyone who joined 
the inner circle of the Church became 



152 HISTORICAL SETTING 

dependent, and absolutely dependent, upon 
the group for all the intimate associations 
which make life worth living. Moreover, 
in that age, and in the Orient even now, 
life is endangered unless the individual is 
known to have a family or group or trade 
guild ready to represent him and his 
interests. Group solidarity plays a large 
part in all life, but in days when it was 
the only protection a humble member of 
society had against tyranny above him 
and crowding competition about him, it 
meant life and death to maintain good 
standing in the protecting group. 

Moreover, persecution made the early 
Christian Church secret, hence again its 
power became gradually an intangible and 
uncertain thing. Its "'ban" had an unknown 
and indefinite reach. Wherever the member 
under the censure of his group would go 
he found already that the hostile attitude 
had preceded him, and he was cut off from 
his natural protectors, and they were now 
his enemies and accusers. That this power 
was abused we have ample evidence. And 
one result was the endeavor of any founder 
of a new schism, who was under the "'ban," 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 153 

to enlarge his following as much as possible 
so as to become independent of the mother 
group. This caused the most bitter feeling 
between factions fighting for "regularity/' 
each faction seeking the support of the 
largest number of outside groups. The 
struggles in labor circles to-day afford 
an admirable commentary upon the early 
Christian history. Nor were these strug- 
gles all in vain. They had a high 
value in raising the intellectual level of 
the early Church and in compelling the 
leaders to face very definite doctrinal 
issues. 

The outcome, however, was the gradual 
rise of an ecclesiastical machinery strong 
enough to settle the disputes, and so closely 
organized that its power reached over first 
the province, then at last over the whole 
Church. The rise of this priestly power 
we may follow step by step. It began very 
early. The pastoral epistles are still in 
the atmosphere of a firm but loving brother- 
hood. When we come to the Ignatian 
epistles and to Cyprian we have already the 
outlines of an imperial hierarchy strong 
enough in the days of Constantine to co- 



154 HISTORICAL SETTING 

operate with the state, and in the time of 
Leo and Gregory to dominate it. 

This process could not go on without 
serious loss. However necessary in a cer- 
tain sense the process seemed to be, it was 
unfortunate in its effects upon the early 
gospel and its contents. Even a casual 
acquaintance with Roman Catholic theology 
reveals the fact that its source is not the 
New Testament. Nor does it do to forget 
that the Roman Catholic Church makes no 
such claim. The Church itself had and 
has the right to formulate dogmas. The 
faith of the early Church was very definite, 
but it was not formulated into dogmas. 
God the Father, God the Son, and God the 
Holy Spirit were tremendous realities to 
the most primitive Church, and even if 
the formula is an addition to Matthew and 
a textual error in the letter of John, never- 
theless, the teaching is certainly as old as 
our oldest Gospel. But it had not hard- 
ened into any philosophic dogma. In the 
same way the unity of God and the doctrine 
of an everlasting life belonged to the very 
essence of the early gospel, but dogmas of 
a purgatory and the descriptions of heaven 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 155 

and hell, so common in the corruptions of 
the Middle Ages, were altogether lacking. 

The central message of the early gospel 
was the Messianic character of Jesus at- 
tested by his resurrection and the coming 
''reign of God." Both of these ideas were 
preached in the language of the Old 
Testament, and the apocalyptic literature 
that has in the Old Testament its best 
representative book is Daniel. As a written 
New Testament arose we see in Matthew 24 
and in Revelation how the thought and 
feeling of this apocalyptic message was 
taken over. The message to the early 
Church was rather to prepare for and then 
await the transformation of society than to 
actually go about its overthrow and recon- 
struction. At the same time the overthrow 
and reconstruction was the early hope, and 
the Messias was expected to come and judge 
and overthrow. 

As the Church prepared and waited and 
the Messias did not come, it reverted to 
the parables and words of Jesus in which 
the kingdom is thought of as yeast, and 
described as growing as a tree or a seed 
(Matthew 13). The disclaimer of Jesus 



156 HISTORICAL SETTING 

as to any knowledge of times and seasons 
was remembered; the early Church began 
gradually to adapt her life to the existing 
conditions, and to see in a rapid and uni- 
versal conversion of all men a new hope 
for the world. Then it became manifest 
how many different wants and religious 
needs the gospel of Jesus as Saviour was 
able to meet. Dreamy mystic natures found 
in his teachings food for their spiritual life. 
Paul and John gave many such a tongue 
and a new hope. Plain matter-of-fact men 
and women, to whom life was just *'doing 
things," found Jesus teaching them what 
to do, and such a book as James ministered 
to them. Sin-burdened hearts found Jesus 
a forgiving life and revelation of a for- 
giving God, and found a new hope and 
new content for their souls. Men in doubt 
and ignorance found his word as brought 
to them a revelation of life and death, and 
saw in it an answer to the cosmic questions 
no science had in any satisfactory way 
answered. Thus the message of Jesus was 
then, as now, a word to vastly different 
natures, and as each took "treasures new 
and old,'' each one supposed he had the 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 157 

whole gospel, and because he knew his need 
and felt how Jesus had met it, thought that 
his explanation of the gospel was the only 
real explanation of it. 

In another chapter we have noted the 
intense speculative interest that had been 
awakened in men's minds. Perhaps the 
world seemed now so big to them that the 
whole cosmos, or universe, began to take 
a place once unknown in men's thought. 
Christianity was eagerly taken up by many 
who wove it into a great cosmic drama, 
in which Light and Darkness struggle for 
victory, and in which at last God over- 
comes, in and through suffering, the demon 
of darkness. This was no merely non- 
religious curiosity. Men were asking, seri- 
ously, "What reason have we for thinking 
that the evil will be overcome?" The 
splendid story of the temptation of Jesus, 
which must have come from his own lips, 
was the ground of assurance. Jesus had 
overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil. 
He was with the Father, having risen from 
the dead. So men and women began to 
speculate, sometimes wildly and heretically, 
sometimes soberly and usefully, upon the 



158 HISTORICAL SETTING 

meaning of that most wonderful story of 
the ministry of Jesus. So arose theology, 
and to many that was what the message 
of Jesus meant, and that was his real 
revelation. 

On the other hand, there was a large 
community oppressed and ground down by 
taxes and military tyranny. To them Jesus 
was the Conqueror and Deliverer. The 
"meek,'' the "poloi or ockloi, or am hareeZy 
were to inherit the earth. The churches 
that Paul had founded everywhere were to 
at last rule where now they were perse- 
cuted; and so a political ambition began to 
take root in men's minds, and the success 
of the Church meant to many the whole 
of the Christian message, and this Church 
as the body of Christ was the new revelation. 

The wonderful thing is the vast variety 
of real religious need which the teachings 
of Jesus met and satisfied, and how on 
into our own day all may see in him 
and his message the bread for their own 
hunger. To weary and discouraged men 
and women, ready to perish, he was the 
assurance of eternal life. At the grave 
and in the midst of death his claim, "I am 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 159 

the resurrection and the Hfe/' spoke the 
comfort no theology and no temporal 
triumph on earth could give; and to these 
the revelation of Jesus was not of earth 
at all, but of heaven, and heaven alone. 

To some, as to Paul, it was not heaven 
or even an earthly paradise, or a new 
speculative cosmic system, but the freedom 
of the new life that made Jesus a real 
revelation of God. What the law could 
not do Jesus did. The law said, "'Be 
righteous,'' but Paul found Christ Jesus 
giving him power to do righteousness; he 
was the dynamic that made the righteous 
life possible, not by works of obedience, 
but by grace and faith. 

Now, one weakness of this situation was, 
of course, that one-sided and narrow inter- 
pretations of Jesus Christ began to demand 
exclusive right within the Church. Hence 
arose schisms and factions. Each laid 
claim to be the only proclaimer of the 
''true" gospel. The wonderful broad- 
mindedness of Paul gave place often to 
narrow and exclusive definitions of the new 
faith. The outward organization was im- 
periled, and so to save itself the Church 



160 HISTORICAL SETTING 

as an outward organization began partly to 
claim more power, but just as often to have 
power forced upon it. Thus there arose 
an outward visible body claiming to be the 
body of Christ and to have the power to 
alone say what was a true Church of Christ. 
We are always compelled from time to 
time to define, but no definition can do 
more than describe anything as it looks 
from one angle. Hence the new definitions 
often made the Church cut off some who 
should have been in it and included some 
who were great weaknesses to it. The 
gospel was thus constantly in danger of 
ceasing to be God's life as revealed in 
Jesus Christ, saving men and women in 
all their deepest needs, and becoming a 
definition or a sacrament, a cult or a social 
reform, a political ambition or a merely 
amiable form of culture. 

This process, moreover, was greatly stim- 
ulated by honest persons who saw in the 
growing power of the young Christian 
Church a chance to identify it with some 
favorite definition or theology, or perhaps 
with some cult or social reform. Nor 
were there lacking those who promised 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 161 

themselves power and political importance 
by taking up the growing cause of the 
gospel. So it happened that the historical 
setting of the early gospel was one of 
increasing confusion to many minds, and 
we soon hear complaints that Christianity 
cannot be defined, and is so loose a term 
that its followers cannot agree upon what 
it really stands for. After the fall of 
Jerusalem the Messianic hope which had 
given such new vitality to Judaism, as seen 
in the apocalyptic literature, must have 
seemed to the scattered Jews of the Hellenic 
world either a dream from which men had 
awakened, or they sought in some cult or 
philosophy or in Christianity the satisfaction 
of their religious yearnings. Some settled 
down to the historic pre-Christian Judaism, 
and thus the Christian Church definitely 
began to separate itself from such syna- 
gogues, and to formulate its gospel in order 
to hedge itself off from the Judaism of the 
thora, or law. 

In the time of Justin Martyr (A. D. 104) 
the Church was struggling still against Juda- 
ism, but the general feeling was of victory 
over Judaism and that the real adjustment 



162 HISTORICAL SETTING 

was henceforth rather with heathen phi- 
losophy. Now, no such struggle goes on 
without a measure of adaptation to the 
position of the antagonist, and a more or 
less conscious attempt to fight fire with fire. 
Christianity thus accepted political organ- 
ization borrowed from persecuting Rome, 
philosophic terms and definitions borrowed 
from the pagan teachers she controverted, 
rites and usages from cults she condemned 
and so completely displaced that we are 
only to-day recovering their history. 

This process meant in many ways an 
essential transformation of the gospel from 
the simplicity of the good news of Jesus 
to the elaborate theology, ceremonial, and 
political organization of the Roman Catholic 
Church. Nor had the great scholars of the 
Reformation period the tools with which 
an historical separation could be made 
between this radical innovation and the 
simple saving faith. Not even the evan- 
gelical revival has given us back a Chris- 
tianity clearly separated from the Roman 
Catholic accretions. Nor have we any hard- 
and-fast rule that can tell us what elements 
are wholesome although without question 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 163 

later historical additions, and what elements 
are dangerous intrusions upon the Christian 
faith. For instance, the keeping of a 
Christian year, so called, is an adaptation 
of the old pagan astronomical cycle, with 
its myths and poetry. The growing Church 
simply took this over, and filled the place 
of the myth with Christian story. The 
whole development was after the New 
Testament canon was closed. Paul had a 
well-grounded fear of the Jewish year, with 
its feasts. Sabbaths, new moons, and days. 
But he had no reason to think that Christ- 
mas and Good Friday and Easter would 
take the place in the new religious life they 
have taken, and we do not know what he 
would have said to it. Jesus going away 
promised the Spirit to guide us into all 
truth, and changing conditions need con- 
stantly new formulations and new organ- 
izations. The main fault with the early 
Church was that it began to assert the 
monopoly of the Spirit, and to identify the 
authority of the Church, or the Council, 
and ultimately of the Pope, with God. 
From this Protestantism has definitely bro- 
ken, and so all these new additions and 



164 HISTORICAL SETTING 

transformations must be reverently and 
carefully tested whether they be of God or 
no. And. what is true of days and rites is 
also true of all doctrinal accretions bor- 
rowed from the Roman Catholic Church. 
We neither accept them on the authority 
of the Roman Catholic Church, nor do we 
reject them because they were first taught 
within her bounds. We try the spirits, 
whether they be of God or no. This was 
not the way of primitive Christianity. It 
had no really critical processes. The simple 
rule was that that was true which every- 
body, everywhere, had always accepted as 
true. Hence as historical criticism was not 
born, many things slipped in as "uni- 
versally'' held which were really pagan 
innovations, and many merely individual 
opinions became the accepted orthodox 
faith. Rites, ceremonies, cults came, in 
large part, from Egypt, Asia Minor, and 
Persia, and dogmas and philosophy, in 
large part, from the Hellenistic world. 

The transformation in the early gospel 
was from relative simplicity to elaboration, 
from comparative elasticity to a certain 
fixedness. It had to be useful for political 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 165 

purpose, and so, again, the social and 
political setting influenced its transforma- 
tion. From the time of Augustus on the 
Roman imperialism ceased largely to battle 
for slaves and booty. The world had 
relative peace, and during that time the 
gospel spread as the messenger of a grow- 
ing organization which was to prove itself 
even as a political force mightier than the 
kingdom of the Caesars. 



166 HISTORICAL SETTING 



CHAPTER IX 

Summary 

The analogy between our questions of to-day and those 
of the early Church — The main services the Church 
rendered — The early gospel and the freedman class — 
The importance for our own day of a knowledge of 
the historic setting of the gospel. 

Thus briefly we have reviewed in outline 
the historical setting of the early gospel. 
We have seen a striking analogy between 
the world to which Jesus spoke and our 
own day. And, in spite of the great differ- 
ences in many outward conditions, we have 
seen that before the Christian Church to- 
day there is set something of the task the 
Church confronted in the first centuries of 
its history. Religion has never been, and 
never can be, "nonpolitical.'' It has been 
the greatest political and social bond in 
all the ages. Where the early Church made 
its first great political blunder was its 
compromise with power for the sake of 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 167 

power. It was always bound from that on 
to consult the state in regard to its own soul, 
and thus lost its soul. The temptation 
Jesus resisted his Church surrendered to. 
Where he refused for the sake of empire 
to bow to the tempter, the Church willingly 
made obeisance and found the inwardness 
of her life imperiled and her freedom gone. 
We dare not judge too harshly. To ex- 
change persecution, dishonor, and secrecy 
for public recognition, privilege, and power 
seemed so dramatic a victory for Christ 
and his cross that we would no doubt 
also have gladly exchanged the historic set- 
ting of those early years of struggle for the 
prospect of power and peace. And yet 
those early years were wonderful years, and, 
in spite of all ignorance, misunderstandings 
of the simple gospel, and compromises with 
much that was poor and really pagan, the 
Church won great victories, and did a work 
of education and organization for which 
she must always be remembered. 

We have seen that the Church of the first 
three centuries was not perfect. It was a 
time of continuous and increasing clouding 
of the gospel. It was a time of compromise 



168 HISTORICAL SETTING 

and unwitting surrender of many values. 
On the other hand, it was also a time of 
great creative energy. The forms and 
phases of that early life are still our heritage. 
Even when we must interpret some of the 
phrases into our modern vernacular, and 
use the forms with a primitive freedom 
and independence, we yet must feel the 
overwhelming sense of our obligation, and 
must learn the lessons of those early years. 
One of the important lessons is the function 
of religion as not only a social bond but 
as pilot in the midst of all social changes. 
The great factor in the history of the years 
following Augustus was the economic ad- 
justment of society in transition from a 
slave-capturing, slave-holding community to 
an ordered crafts and small agricultural era, 
with its developing feudal character. This 
change was almost made possible by the 
work of the Christian Church. She acted 
as educator, friend, organizer, and inspirer 
of the class that was slowly struggling for 
recognition. She did then for her age what 
the Methodist Church did for England's 
working class under the inspiration of John 
Wesley. She did what the Roman com- 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 169 

munion could have done and failed to do 
before the French Revolution. It is of the 
greatest importance, therefore, that we 
understand the historical setting of the 
early gospel, that we may duly appreciate 
its mission and most important contribution 
to the history of culture. 

The early gospel did not and could not 
change the freedman class into a group 
of philosophers on the intellectual level of 
Plato or Aristotle. It did not and could 
not make of its heterogeneous elements an 
artistic society on the same plane with 
Phidias and Polyclitus, but it gave the 
world Byzantine art, and the noble inspira- 
tions of the Middle Ages, and spread abroad 
a culture on a far wider basis than any 
slave society could furnish. It prepared 
also the way for a political society, free 
in a sense that no ancient society could 
ever have been free. It gave, as well, the 
basis for a new ethics and new standards 
of conduct. We have never worked out 
those standards. When the early gospel 
compromised with political power it ac- 
cepted political law and pagan philosophy 
as the basis of its outward codes, to the 



170 HISTORICAL SETTING 

lasting damage of Christian ethics. It 
cooperated, indeed, with Cynic-Stoicism to 
ennoble and enrich the legal ethics of 
the age. Yet these remained in their sub- 
stantial outline pagan and not Christian, 
and remain in good part pagan on into 
our own day. Here, again, the historical 
setting of the gospel is of supreme interest, 
for it enables us to see, in part at least, 
just where and why the standards of con- 
duct of the early Church came to so vastly 
differ from the early and simpler Christian 
ideals. 

Only in its historic setting can we try 
to separate those elements in the Christian 
evolution which have permanent meaning 
for us from those which belong to the pass- 
ing stage of culture and the temporary level 
of the intelligence of the day. The message 
of Jesus was that God was in life and had 
become incarnate in humanity. The splen- 
did faith of Christianity was that it had 
seen God in Christ Jesus and that God 
called men to be perfect as God was perfect. 
This opens the way to vast vistas of still 
further change and progress. And the 
early Christian Church felt with Paul that 



OF THE EARLY GOSPEL 171 

Jesus Christ was more than a hero and 
martyr, more than a teacher, or even 
friend; that he was a power abiding in life, 
and filling every life that came to him with 
new meaning and new graciousness. 

We need to study the early gospel in 
its setting that, marking its power, we may 
do with it in our day what God sets us to 
do. It still has its old capacity for awaken- 
ing new ideals, new hopes, and new long- 
ings. It still makes men discontented with 
self and social selfishness. It is still raising 
men and women from the dead and calling 
all men to a higher life. 



SEP 13 1912 



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